2008 was the year the Global Minotaur expired.
2009 was the year of the post-Minotaur bailouts.
2010 was the calm before the storm.
2011 was the year of the Arab Spring.
2012 was the year of the indignados.
2013 was the year of Taksim and Rio.
2014 was the year of Maidan, Kurdistan, Occupy Hong Kong and Jokowi.
2015 is going to be the Year of the Witcher.
Friday, December 26, 2014
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
"Swallow us -- and your Empire dies."
The ruble is imploding, which is not a surprise to anyone who follows geopolitics seriously. In fact, the collapse was accurately predicted all the way back in February 2013 by Yuri Romanenko, who wrote this scintillating essay, The Steel Jaws of History. Historians will probably regard it as the manifesto of the Maidan -- the moment when Eurasia's anti-colonial nationalisms finally converged with its anti-neoliberal mobilizations. My own rough-and-ready translation of the essay (corrections are welcome in the comments):
The Steel Jaws of History
by Yuri Romanenko
February 2, 2013
Ukrainians, we are a great nation. We pulverize everyone who gets in our way.
That's not to say we have our own Napoleon or Alexander the Great.
They're not necessary.
We take the fortress through the side gate.
We act like a sweet poison – we're pleasant to drink, but then you slowly and painfully die.
We effortlessly gave birth to [Valentin] Glushko, [Natasha] Korolev, [Ivan] Paskevich and [Pavel] Rybalko.
Such a captivating empire.
They love our immense people.
But we're bait. Swallow us, and your empire dies. Sooner or later.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Austro-Hungary, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union.
Our wake is everywhere.
If you're an expanding empire – don't touch Ukraine.
You'll die.
Inevitably. Inexorably. Instructively.
Ukraine – the pulverizer of meaning. The acid of history. The devourer of prospects.
The Edge of [Stephen King's] Langoliers. The Damned of Chernozem. The Anteroom of Chaos.
That's our unique position in the global arena. Note: not a bad position to have.
We only need to understand it. And take advantage.
It's time to understand the main contradiction of the Ukrainian character.
We have just enough: resources, crazy people.
The only thing we've lacked: an understanding of our own strength.
Really, we are the quintessential vitality of the people.
We know how to adapt.
Occupy niches.
We know how to win.
We don't attack by rushing ahead. This much, history taught us. We attack the flanks.
Bore from within.
When we realize we are powerful, then sooner or later we come to imperial forms of thinking.
Strength generates scale thinking.
We have the power, but not the scale.
The world is the scale. If you want to own the world – master its scale. No other way.
When we get things together at scale - we will have tremendous prospects.
We just need to get rid of whatever doesn't cut it worldwide.
We need less victimization, less sleaze, less meanness, less stupidity, less envy, less stubbornness.
More openness, more reciprocity, more trust, more perseverance, more persistence, more curiosity.
What is to become of Ukrainians?
If you want to become stronger, and to change things – you need to get others together.
It's time to change.
Those who can't change – have no future.
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Biji Kurdistan
From the heart of Eurasia, from the soul of one of Eurasia's greatest peoples, the gift of song from Heskif Orkestra: "I Am Kobane".
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Wage Slavery
New frontiers in US corporate innovation: wage-slaves have no right to be paid.
After 35 years of falling real wages, the time has come for US workers to junk this failed Empire and start organizing democratic, membership-run unions.
After 35 years of falling real wages, the time has come for US workers to junk this failed Empire and start organizing democratic, membership-run unions.
Friday, December 5, 2014
Geopolitics, the Laugh Track
Joke:
One fine day, the EU and the US decided to have a competitive race over which geopolitical entity would find a way to destroy their middle-class through plutocratic looting and dumbass imperial wars the soonest.
So who finally won?
Putin's Russia.
One fine day, the EU and the US decided to have a competitive race over which geopolitical entity would find a way to destroy their middle-class through plutocratic looting and dumbass imperial wars the soonest.
So who finally won?
Putin's Russia.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
All Tomorrow's Blog-parties
It's fascinating how would-be radical blogs in the US blogosphere mimic the life-cycle of the authoritarian Left parties which historically preceded them. These blogs first emerged out of scattered, desperate moments of individual resistance to neoliberalism -- a textual Leninism, as it were, borne of the irreconcilable confrontation between the critical consciousness and the thorny contradictions of neoliberalism.
During moments of neoliberal crisis, and if the blog founder has the requisite talent and energy, the blog quickly expands. It soon hits its peak with a slew of fresh contributors, each contributing something new and useful to the conversation.
At a certain point, however, the intellectual reach and managerial capacity of any single founder (or even group of founders) begins to run aground on the sheer amount of information aggregated by the site. That information requires a collective set of skills, theories, and experiences, and most of all a cooperative division of labor which must be slowly and painfully constructed over time (think of the effort required to create and maintain the average university department).
This necessity comes into conflict with the original mandate of the blog, which was to showcase the particularity of the founder's voice. The inevitable result is a wild oscillation between information bloat -- useful items are buried under an ocean of trivia -- and trolling -- the recourse to lazy epithets, idiotic cliches, and foolish propaganda. Both poles of the oscillation drive out thoughtful posts and rigorous critical thinking.
At a certain point, it becomes a chore to sift through the dross to find the gems. Suddenly, textual Leninism generates the inevitable recoil of administrative recentralization, a.k.a editorial Stalinism. The critique of neoliberal dogma turns into a new kind of doxa -- as stagnant and unthinking as what it once claimed to critique. The same bloggers who once shared their insights on topics they know better than anyone else suddenly turn, as if by magic, into the most provincial and ignorant blowhards, whenever they are confronted with concepts or experiences outside of their professional competence. They stop doing original research, reading new books, or engaging in any contemporary cultural activity, and retreat to an inner circle of long-time experiences, arguments and cronies.
The most characteristic sign of this new doxa is the intellectual regression away from class struggle and back into conspiracy theory. In the realm of the US blogosphere, this new doxa critiques the lies of the US plutocracy - by declaring the lies of non-American plutocrats to be truth. It critiques the genocides of the US empire - by denying that the genocides of the numerous other empires in the world-system ever happened. It complains endlessly about the foolish voters who vote for the Reps or Dems - by denying that any other country has elections worth paying attention to, or democratic processes worth learning from, or actual citizens with their own opinions and modes of political organization.
The laudable attempt to democratize information recoils into its opposite: into yet another information monopoly, where the self-selected few know all -- because the masses are, by definition, too stupid to know anything, and anyone who disagrees is obviously a CIA agent. That is why the single most prevalent emotional tone of such blogs is a chaotic, insensate despair -- leavened with rage at the occasional dissident and heretic who dares to contradict the doxa.
To paraphrase Brecht, even if has a thousand posters, such blogs end up having only one-tenth of a brain.
Conversely, the task for we digital commoners of the 21st century is to do just the opposite: to enable a network of one hundred to think with the productivity of one thousand. One of the most intriguing models for this productivity is the transnational videogame studio, where small groups of three to four hundred talented developers are creating game-worlds and interactive experiences far richer, more detailed, and more satisfying than the multiple thousands of personnel and hundreds of millions of dollars required by the average Hollywood blockbuster.
During moments of neoliberal crisis, and if the blog founder has the requisite talent and energy, the blog quickly expands. It soon hits its peak with a slew of fresh contributors, each contributing something new and useful to the conversation.
At a certain point, however, the intellectual reach and managerial capacity of any single founder (or even group of founders) begins to run aground on the sheer amount of information aggregated by the site. That information requires a collective set of skills, theories, and experiences, and most of all a cooperative division of labor which must be slowly and painfully constructed over time (think of the effort required to create and maintain the average university department).
This necessity comes into conflict with the original mandate of the blog, which was to showcase the particularity of the founder's voice. The inevitable result is a wild oscillation between information bloat -- useful items are buried under an ocean of trivia -- and trolling -- the recourse to lazy epithets, idiotic cliches, and foolish propaganda. Both poles of the oscillation drive out thoughtful posts and rigorous critical thinking.
At a certain point, it becomes a chore to sift through the dross to find the gems. Suddenly, textual Leninism generates the inevitable recoil of administrative recentralization, a.k.a editorial Stalinism. The critique of neoliberal dogma turns into a new kind of doxa -- as stagnant and unthinking as what it once claimed to critique. The same bloggers who once shared their insights on topics they know better than anyone else suddenly turn, as if by magic, into the most provincial and ignorant blowhards, whenever they are confronted with concepts or experiences outside of their professional competence. They stop doing original research, reading new books, or engaging in any contemporary cultural activity, and retreat to an inner circle of long-time experiences, arguments and cronies.
The most characteristic sign of this new doxa is the intellectual regression away from class struggle and back into conspiracy theory. In the realm of the US blogosphere, this new doxa critiques the lies of the US plutocracy - by declaring the lies of non-American plutocrats to be truth. It critiques the genocides of the US empire - by denying that the genocides of the numerous other empires in the world-system ever happened. It complains endlessly about the foolish voters who vote for the Reps or Dems - by denying that any other country has elections worth paying attention to, or democratic processes worth learning from, or actual citizens with their own opinions and modes of political organization.
The laudable attempt to democratize information recoils into its opposite: into yet another information monopoly, where the self-selected few know all -- because the masses are, by definition, too stupid to know anything, and anyone who disagrees is obviously a CIA agent. That is why the single most prevalent emotional tone of such blogs is a chaotic, insensate despair -- leavened with rage at the occasional dissident and heretic who dares to contradict the doxa.
To paraphrase Brecht, even if has a thousand posters, such blogs end up having only one-tenth of a brain.
Conversely, the task for we digital commoners of the 21st century is to do just the opposite: to enable a network of one hundred to think with the productivity of one thousand. One of the most intriguing models for this productivity is the transnational videogame studio, where small groups of three to four hundred talented developers are creating game-worlds and interactive experiences far richer, more detailed, and more satisfying than the multiple thousands of personnel and hundreds of millions of dollars required by the average Hollywood blockbuster.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Panda-monium
China's summer internet sensation: the Chopstick Brothers' Little Apple. It's outrageously, deliriously good, brimming with more postcolonial smackdowns than you can shake a camcorder at. The song is Chinese, while the video is South Korean, making this one of the first East-Southeast Asian transnational blockbusters.
If you downloaded the video or teach media, feel free to download these English-language SRT subtitles (I've slightly corrected them and cued them to match the video), available here.
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| The Chopstick Brothers (筷子兄弟) |
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| Bae Seul-Ki (배슬기) All But Steals the Show |
Thursday, November 27, 2014
After the Global Minotaur
Long essay on the changing face of 21st century geopolitics is up here. Short version: (1) neoliberalism is a fancy word for transnational capitalism, (2) no single country will ever be able to dominate the transnational world-system the way Britain ran the 19th century and the US ran the 20th century, and (3) all class struggle has become transnational class struggle. Comments/critique welcome!
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Russo-imperialism Just Lost Kazakhstan
History keeps accelerating. Nazarbayev, one of the savviest politicians on the planet, scraps the Eurasian energy-rent model of accumulation and tells the Putinists to step off, all at once:
Address of the head of state to the people of Kazakhstan, November 11, 2014
Translation: "Don't even think about pulling a Crimea on our northern territories, Putin. Remember how us Kazakh soldiers ripped apart the Wehrmacht in WW II with our bare hands? Well guess what -- your nice, polite gentlemen would be facing 5 million of us... on our home turf. Now if you'll excuse us, we're going to get ridiculously rich by investing our oil wealth in infrastructure and trade with China and India."
In short, Kazakhstan just bailed from Putinism's phantom empire.
Which leads to an obvious question. Lukaschenko is backing Ukraine's sovereignty and cozying up with the EU, Tajikistan is getting $6 billion from China's Silk Road project to co-develop Central Asia, Mongolia is a stable democracy, and Georgia is gone from the imperial fold. So who exactly was supposed to join Putinism's mighty empire?
Address of the head of state to the people of Kazakhstan, November 11, 2014
Translation: "Don't even think about pulling a Crimea on our northern territories, Putin. Remember how us Kazakh soldiers ripped apart the Wehrmacht in WW II with our bare hands? Well guess what -- your nice, polite gentlemen would be facing 5 million of us... on our home turf. Now if you'll excuse us, we're going to get ridiculously rich by investing our oil wealth in infrastructure and trade with China and India."
In short, Kazakhstan just bailed from Putinism's phantom empire.
Which leads to an obvious question. Lukaschenko is backing Ukraine's sovereignty and cozying up with the EU, Tajikistan is getting $6 billion from China's Silk Road project to co-develop Central Asia, Mongolia is a stable democracy, and Georgia is gone from the imperial fold. So who exactly was supposed to join Putinism's mighty empire?
Monday, November 17, 2014
Monday, November 10, 2014
Call of Occupy
My mind. Officially. Blown.
For years, the Call of Duty franchise was stagnating in a horrible, endless loop of ludicrous neo-national villains, Terror War boosterism, and US neo-imperialism. So when I took a peek at the latest CoD, my expectations were zero.
But they finally got it right.
Just three short years after Occupy tore a continent-sized hole in the heart of neoliberalism's matrix, the single most neoconservative franchise of our time has joined the anti-neoliberal barricades.
I kid you not.
The short version: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is the CoD remix of Metal Gear Solid 4, only without Ocelot. Rogue PMC plutocrat bent on world domination: check. Underlying theme of biowarfare: check. Feisty female soldiers: check. New game mechanics: check (no spoilers, but be prepared to think and move... in three dimensions.) Yeah, they could've done a little more with the stealth elements, but the core pleasure of CoD has always been about delivering paintball at lightspeed, so no worries there. And I won't spoil the ending, but the denunciation of the Terror War comes through loud and clear.
Kudos to Sledgehammer, the Activision studio, for finally getting rid of the last rusty scrap metal of neocon revanchism, and letting us players run amok with the sleek exoskeleton of a true 21st century shooter. (Also, I suspect the game benefited enormously from its 3-year development cycle, rather than the 2-year cycle typical of past titles).
The only piece of the puzzle still missing is lead character diversity. The incidental characters and the environments are finally as transnational as they need to be (the kickass Nigerian level was an especial high point), but the main characters still need more postcolonial pizzazz. The folks at Ubisoft Montreal seem to have gotten this memo, and are finally introducing a postcolonial lead character in Far Cry 4. While many franchises have the problem that they're restricted to some level of historical veracity, CoD has basically been a science fiction franchise for some time, so there's really no barrier to creating stories featuring, say, some badass commando from Quang Tre or Lviv in 2060.
Monday, November 3, 2014
First They Came for the Monuments...
...because nobody stood up for the monuments. Russo-imperialism just took down a monument to that dangerous, fire-breathing radical... Steve Jobs. Can't. Make. This. War-mongering. Insanity. Up.
Round 2 of Putinism's monstrous, evil colonial war is about to begin. About 10,000 Russian army soldiers have gathered during the ceasefire in a tiny sliver of Donbass, with hundreds of tanks and artillery pieces and heavy anti-air missile systems. They will be launching an offensive very, very soon against what the Russo-imperialists, completely drunk on their own imperial dementia, deride as a bunch of drum-beating African tribes -- the subhuman Ukro-menschen who must be exterminated for glorious rule of Oil Czar, Greatest of All Czars, Master of Pipelines Which Enrich Czar's Plutocrats.
43 million Ukrainians will resist tooth and nail, and when the shock troops are driven back, a full-scale Russian invasion will begin.
War is coming. It will be terrible and bloody.
It will end with the abysmal failure and fall of Eurasia's Bonaparte, just like France's far savvier and more cosmopolitan historical original. But I shudder to think of the price tag.
All I can say to ordinary Ukrainians is that we citizens of the democracies of the world (two-thirds of the world's population) as well as almost all the remaining citizens who live in transitional governments (because most have bitter memories of colonial invasions, and know exactly what you are fighting for) -- will support you. We will lobby our governments to provide you with the weapons and ammunition you need to defend yourselves, as well as the expertise and advice you need to help improve your democracy.
All I can say to ordinary Russian citizens is that there is no crime in refusing to carry out the orders of a criminal. The Ukrainians are your Slavic brothers and sisters, and killing them for the sake of an aging gangster's bruised ego is the most terrible sin.
There was a brief shining moment, during the annexation of Crimea, where things could have gone differently. The Ukrainians did not use force to stop the Russian invaders, but chose civil disobedience, the rule of law, and free and fair national elections. As is typical with autocratic regimes, Putinism learned the wrong lesson from its quick triumph, and assumed that the Ukrainians would never fight for their autonomy. The Russo-imperialists mistook $110 per barrel for an economic policy, and the imperial past for the postcolonial present.
Ironically, Putinism is now in a desperate race with time. In the short term, the Russian economy is going to melt, along with those formerly sky-high oil prices, which will stumble along at $70-$80 for the next few years. But in just three short years, solar grid parity will be here for 80% of the planet, and whatever else happens, the hydrocarbon age will come to an end.
Bye-bye, Eurasian petro-colonialisms. You will not be missed.
Round 2 of Putinism's monstrous, evil colonial war is about to begin. About 10,000 Russian army soldiers have gathered during the ceasefire in a tiny sliver of Donbass, with hundreds of tanks and artillery pieces and heavy anti-air missile systems. They will be launching an offensive very, very soon against what the Russo-imperialists, completely drunk on their own imperial dementia, deride as a bunch of drum-beating African tribes -- the subhuman Ukro-menschen who must be exterminated for glorious rule of Oil Czar, Greatest of All Czars, Master of Pipelines Which Enrich Czar's Plutocrats.
43 million Ukrainians will resist tooth and nail, and when the shock troops are driven back, a full-scale Russian invasion will begin.
War is coming. It will be terrible and bloody.
It will end with the abysmal failure and fall of Eurasia's Bonaparte, just like France's far savvier and more cosmopolitan historical original. But I shudder to think of the price tag.
All I can say to ordinary Ukrainians is that we citizens of the democracies of the world (two-thirds of the world's population) as well as almost all the remaining citizens who live in transitional governments (because most have bitter memories of colonial invasions, and know exactly what you are fighting for) -- will support you. We will lobby our governments to provide you with the weapons and ammunition you need to defend yourselves, as well as the expertise and advice you need to help improve your democracy.
All I can say to ordinary Russian citizens is that there is no crime in refusing to carry out the orders of a criminal. The Ukrainians are your Slavic brothers and sisters, and killing them for the sake of an aging gangster's bruised ego is the most terrible sin.
There was a brief shining moment, during the annexation of Crimea, where things could have gone differently. The Ukrainians did not use force to stop the Russian invaders, but chose civil disobedience, the rule of law, and free and fair national elections. As is typical with autocratic regimes, Putinism learned the wrong lesson from its quick triumph, and assumed that the Ukrainians would never fight for their autonomy. The Russo-imperialists mistook $110 per barrel for an economic policy, and the imperial past for the postcolonial present.
Ironically, Putinism is now in a desperate race with time. In the short term, the Russian economy is going to melt, along with those formerly sky-high oil prices, which will stumble along at $70-$80 for the next few years. But in just three short years, solar grid parity will be here for 80% of the planet, and whatever else happens, the hydrocarbon age will come to an end.
Bye-bye, Eurasian petro-colonialisms. You will not be missed.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Neoliberalism's Other, Asiazilla-sized Shoe Finally Drops
[Insert extended geopolitical cackle.]
I've said it before: Tahrir-Zucotti wasn't even the beginning, it was just the overture to the beginning. The overture continued in the form of Gezi, Rio de Janeiro, the Euromaidan, and Jokowi. Nobody could know when, where or how the last act of the overture would transpire But it has come at last, in Hong Kong.
Be afraid, plutocrats. Be very, very afraid. The 7 billion of us who have to work for a living on this planet are using digital tools to unmask you: Wall Street greedocrats, EU bankstercrats, Russian petrocrats, Chinese prince-o-crats, Indian industrocrats. We don't care what national flags you wave at us, we're tired of working harder and harder to make you richer and richer, while we get poorer and poorer.
%!#$ your prisons, pay us.
@$^% your flags, pay us.
%$#* your excuses, pay us.
Pay us.
Or pay.
Monday, September 15, 2014
Game Shows We'd Like To See
The world needs a game show. Not just any game show, but a game show which properly expresses the admixture of toxic greed, lunatic power-mongering, and generalized fear and loathing typical of dying 21st century empires.
We can call this new game show "Culling The Herd". Its host will be a made-for-video star called MC Overstretch. Its tagline: "Watch dying empires do increasingly stupid things leading to their self-destruction... all in 1080P!"
The outline for Season 1:
Episode 1. US tries to swallow Iraq. Watch $3 trillion and thousands of lives go up in smoke, generating nothing but civil war and Daesh serial killer scum. Co-hosted by a spokesperson from the YPG and a representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Episode 2. Wall Street tries to swallow the global banking system. Bankstering: the only crime business where failure is punished with lucrative Federal bailouts. Co-hosted by Joseph Stiglitz and William K. Black.
Episode 3. Euroliberalism tries to swallow Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Every failed liberal-era financial idea ever invented... reinvented by neoliberals. Co-hosted by Yanis Varoufakis and James Galbraith.
Episode 4. Russia tries to swallow Ukraine. Watch for the entertaining interviews with Russo-imperialists, proving that all empires in human history have been equally bad: "Uh, NATO CIA same-sex Ukro-fascist purple dragons from Arcturus shot down MH-17, yeah, that's it! What, those 5,000 Russian troops occupying Donbass? That's an elvish lie spread by filthy hobbitses! Gollum... gollum... Er... is this microphone on? ...Bueller...?" Co-hosted by Mustafa Nayem and Myroslava Petsa.
And now, latest of all:
Episode 5. Microsoft tries to swallow Minecraft. Co-hosted by the Minecraft community. Watch everyone's least-favorite fading desktop monopolist find yet another billion-sized money pit to stumble into! Boo and hiss when legions of corporate lawyers start suing 10-year-old modmakers! Cheer wildly when the digital commons transforms Minecraft into a free-to-play codebase!
We've got our popcorn ready. Let the games begin!
We can call this new game show "Culling The Herd". Its host will be a made-for-video star called MC Overstretch. Its tagline: "Watch dying empires do increasingly stupid things leading to their self-destruction... all in 1080P!"
The outline for Season 1:
Episode 1. US tries to swallow Iraq. Watch $3 trillion and thousands of lives go up in smoke, generating nothing but civil war and Daesh serial killer scum. Co-hosted by a spokesperson from the YPG and a representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Episode 2. Wall Street tries to swallow the global banking system. Bankstering: the only crime business where failure is punished with lucrative Federal bailouts. Co-hosted by Joseph Stiglitz and William K. Black.
Episode 3. Euroliberalism tries to swallow Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Every failed liberal-era financial idea ever invented... reinvented by neoliberals. Co-hosted by Yanis Varoufakis and James Galbraith.
Episode 4. Russia tries to swallow Ukraine. Watch for the entertaining interviews with Russo-imperialists, proving that all empires in human history have been equally bad: "Uh, NATO CIA same-sex Ukro-fascist purple dragons from Arcturus shot down MH-17, yeah, that's it! What, those 5,000 Russian troops occupying Donbass? That's an elvish lie spread by filthy hobbitses! Gollum... gollum... Er... is this microphone on? ...Bueller...?" Co-hosted by Mustafa Nayem and Myroslava Petsa.
And now, latest of all:
Episode 5. Microsoft tries to swallow Minecraft. Co-hosted by the Minecraft community. Watch everyone's least-favorite fading desktop monopolist find yet another billion-sized money pit to stumble into! Boo and hiss when legions of corporate lawyers start suing 10-year-old modmakers! Cheer wildly when the digital commons transforms Minecraft into a free-to-play codebase!
We've got our popcorn ready. Let the games begin!
Thursday, August 28, 2014
The Guns of August 2014
It begins.
One hundred years after imperialism triggered the slaughter of the Great War, the archaic, obsolete monster of national imperialism is having its last stand on the plains of Eurasia.
I did not think things would come to this pass. But they have. And progressives must draw the consequences.
Russia, a petro-plutocracy afflicted with a deindustrialized, third-string economy, and run by a fourth-rate gangster, has openly invaded Ukraine.
Roughly 5,000 Russian soldiers with at least 500 Russian army tanks, APCs and artillery pieces have seized a series of border towns and villages in eastern Ukraine. Tens of thousands will follow.
Putinism has launched an outrageously criminal, utterly illegal, and completely insane war of imperial aggression on its Slavic neighbor -- a neighbor which has never attacked it, damaged it, or threatened its security in any conceivable way. Incidentally, the regions of Luzhansk and Donetsk which Russian soldiers are currently occupying are 70% ethnic Ukrainian. The only way they will ever become Russian provinces is by murdering the 5 million ethnic Ukrainians who already reside there. Stalinism already tried and failed to do this, and Putinism won't succeed, either.
I shudder to think of the Ukrainian and Russian blood which will be spilled.
And yet if anticolonial war must come... let it come.
Ukraine has inherited the long and illustrious mantle of anticolonial national revolutions. The United States and Haiti were founded by the very first of these revolutions; then came the revolutions of the South American nations. More recently, in the 1940s, it was the turn of the Indonesian and Chinese revolutions. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was the turn of the Algerian and Vietnamese revolutions, among many others. In 1989, it was the turn of the Eastern European nations. Now Ukraine has joined this long and storied list. It has decided to break free of the shackles of the Russian empire. Forever.
Putinism is in for an extremely unpleasant surprise. Ukraine will now fully mobilize a people's army of 1 million soldiers. It is a war Putinism cannot win, because it does not have the manpower or resources to defeat Ukraine. The United States had 305 million people in 2003 and spent almost $2 trillion on the invasion of Iraq, but its army could not defeat a rag-tag Sunni insurgency of al-Anbar province, sustained by only 5 million people and minimal weaponry. By contrast, Ukraine's 43 million citizens have copious supplies of deadly Cold War weaponry, and will shortly be receiving massive arms shipments from the European Union.
If anticolonial war must come... let it come.
Putinism's war will be a military, economic, and social catastrophe for Russia.
Ukraine's war will be its crucible of freedom.
Putinism will lose its War of Idiotic Imperialism.
Ukraine will win its War of Independence.
Putin will end just like his French forebear, Napoleon III: friendless, reviled and detested.
Ukraine's story is just beginning.
I grieve for every single life which will be lost in the war.
But if anticolonial war must come... let it come.
One hundred years after imperialism triggered the slaughter of the Great War, the archaic, obsolete monster of national imperialism is having its last stand on the plains of Eurasia.
I did not think things would come to this pass. But they have. And progressives must draw the consequences.
Russia, a petro-plutocracy afflicted with a deindustrialized, third-string economy, and run by a fourth-rate gangster, has openly invaded Ukraine.
Roughly 5,000 Russian soldiers with at least 500 Russian army tanks, APCs and artillery pieces have seized a series of border towns and villages in eastern Ukraine. Tens of thousands will follow.
Putinism has launched an outrageously criminal, utterly illegal, and completely insane war of imperial aggression on its Slavic neighbor -- a neighbor which has never attacked it, damaged it, or threatened its security in any conceivable way. Incidentally, the regions of Luzhansk and Donetsk which Russian soldiers are currently occupying are 70% ethnic Ukrainian. The only way they will ever become Russian provinces is by murdering the 5 million ethnic Ukrainians who already reside there. Stalinism already tried and failed to do this, and Putinism won't succeed, either.
I shudder to think of the Ukrainian and Russian blood which will be spilled.
And yet if anticolonial war must come... let it come.
Ukraine has inherited the long and illustrious mantle of anticolonial national revolutions. The United States and Haiti were founded by the very first of these revolutions; then came the revolutions of the South American nations. More recently, in the 1940s, it was the turn of the Indonesian and Chinese revolutions. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was the turn of the Algerian and Vietnamese revolutions, among many others. In 1989, it was the turn of the Eastern European nations. Now Ukraine has joined this long and storied list. It has decided to break free of the shackles of the Russian empire. Forever.
Putinism is in for an extremely unpleasant surprise. Ukraine will now fully mobilize a people's army of 1 million soldiers. It is a war Putinism cannot win, because it does not have the manpower or resources to defeat Ukraine. The United States had 305 million people in 2003 and spent almost $2 trillion on the invasion of Iraq, but its army could not defeat a rag-tag Sunni insurgency of al-Anbar province, sustained by only 5 million people and minimal weaponry. By contrast, Ukraine's 43 million citizens have copious supplies of deadly Cold War weaponry, and will shortly be receiving massive arms shipments from the European Union.
If anticolonial war must come... let it come.
Putinism's war will be a military, economic, and social catastrophe for Russia.
Ukraine's war will be its crucible of freedom.
Putinism will lose its War of Idiotic Imperialism.
Ukraine will win its War of Independence.
Putin will end just like his French forebear, Napoleon III: friendless, reviled and detested.
Ukraine's story is just beginning.
I grieve for every single life which will be lost in the war.
But if anticolonial war must come... let it come.
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Today's Videogames Have Polish Heart
Shouts out to the gamers and digital artists of Poland, described in this excellent series on Polish videogame culture by Polygon. For a range of good geopolitical reasons, the zone between Poland and Ukraine is generating some of the most amazing forms of digital creativity today. More on this in the future...
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Imperial War, Imperial Crime
 |
| Child laying wreath at Dutch Embassy, Kiev, Ukraine |
Putinism conjured up a phony imperial war against Ukraine by using lies and more lies, but the blood of its victims is quite real. On July 17, 2014, Malaysian Air flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over eastern Ukraine by Russian terrorists armed with an advanced anti-air missile system. A total of 298 human beings perished. Eighty were children.
It is the single worst air disaster since 9-11.
How do we know it was Russian terrorists? Multiple sources from multiple governments and intelligence analysts confirm that the missile was not fired from an airplane (neither Ukraine nor Russia had military aircraft in the vicinity during the shoot-down), while satellite data indicated that an advanced SAM missile system locked onto the plane and shot it down. Ukraine's armed forces have no such systems deployed, because the terrorists have no air force, ergo the missile could only have been Russian.
We have copious amounts of photographic and video evidence of the Russian terrorists openly driving SA-11 launchers with missiles on Ukrainian roads. Citizen journalists quickly collated the evidence, all of which points to Russian culpability.
Any lingering doubts about Putinism's responsibility for the crime were erased when the Russian terrorists (they are Russians with Russian passports, commanded by Russian officers) openly admitted to receiving an advanced anti-missile system from Russia, and then openly admitted using it (Ukraine's state security service tapped the phones of the terrorists, and provided translations). We really could not make this up if we tried - click here and here.
The final toll stands at 193 Dutch citizens (one with dual Dutch-US citizenship), 43 Malaysians, 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians, 10 Britons (one with dual UK-South African citizenship), 4 Belgians, 4 Germans, 3 Filipinos, 1 Canadian and 1 New Zealander. Four additional victims have yet to be identified. To give you a sense of the scale of the disaster, the number of Dutch victims relative to their population of 16.8 million is the demographic equivalent of 3,600 victims vis-a-vis the US population of 314 million. In short, the Netherlands just had its very own 9-11.
The insanity of Putinism's demented war on Ukraine has gone on long enough. The world community must act -- not with anger, but with democratic resolve.
Russia must immediately cease its imperialist war of colonial annexation on Ukraine, and withdraw its troops and munitions from Donetsk and Luzhansk. (Crimea is a separate issue, and can only be resolved through peaceful negotiations, and by the free and open democratic choice of the people of Crimea -- and no, that bogus March referendum held at gunpoint was not a free choice).
For its part, Ukraine's government has indicated that it will respect the full cultural, political and social rights of its ethnic Russian minority, and is in the process of bringing local accountability and administrative decentralization to its regions.
Russia has every right to hold Ukraine accountable to those promises, through peaceful dialogue with Ukraine's legitimate and democratic government. But Putinism has absolutely no right to wage open war on a neighboring country which did not threaten Russia, invade Russia, or harm Russia's security in any way.
The sunflower-laden fields of Ukraine have seen enough bloodshed for several lifetimes over. Let the catastrophe of MH-17 be the beginning of the end of this madness.
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| This note at the Dutch Embassy in Moscow represents the real Russia. Some day, Putinism's despicable petro-plutocracy will fall and a free, democratic Russia will rise. |
Friday, May 9, 2014
It's a Bird, It's a Plane... Better Still, It's A B-E-A-R
For all its wondrous innovations, today's videogame culture has lacked one crucial element which precludes it from true greatness.
This element is, of course, bears.
I'm happy to report that a brave developer has taken up the challenge, in the form of Bear Simulator. Developer John Farjay launched a Kickstarter campaign to finance the game, and ended up receiving far more money than he expected (proving that the pool of gamers hungry for Bear Greatness is not small). Videos are here. Monokuma approves!
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Musical Interlude: The Colors
To refresh our faith in the human spirit, some awesome art-house rock from Mongolia -- check out The Colors' Mind Oddity. Mongolia has long been one of the most successful of the post-Soviet states, with a dynamic economy and a flourishing democracy. More recently, it's been producing some fantastic digital media. The Mongolian lyrics:
**************
Нүдээ нээхэд гүн цэнхэр өнгө
Зүүдэнд баймаар их одод нисэж байна
Хөвөн хөвөн ширтсээр
Зөөлөн зөөлөн шивэрсээр
Зүүдлээд байна уу гэж бодхоор
Зөвхөн надруу анивчин мишээнэ
Хөвөн хөвөн шивэрсээр
Зөөлөн зөөлөн ширтсээр
Хараагүй загас ч хайрлан живмээр
Харц салгаж чадахгүй тэр гэгээ
Харанхуй тэнгэрээс гялбан дусалж
Мөрөөдлийг минь гэрэлтүүлнэ
Тэнгэрт би гарчихвуу гэлтэй түмэн одод
Усны мандал дээр хөвөн улам ойртсоор байна
Шүүрээд шүүрээд тэвэрсээр
Уусан уусан живсээр
Чи бол гэгээ
Би харанхуй
Чамайг хайралваас би юу ч харахгүй
Би хаана зогсохоо мэдэхгүй давалгаалж
Чамайг өөрөөсөө түлхэн явууллаа....
**************
My Google-based English translation, which is probably drastically wrong (email me if you have a better version):
**************
Open your eyes, deep blue color
Wishing for a dream of flying stars
Cotton, cotton watching
Soft, soft layers
Dreamt of that backdoor
Just call me a flashing machine
Cotton, cotton layers
Softly, softly watching
A fish blindly in love, in the stream
Look, he can't distinguish the light
Darkness, the heavens trembling, falling
Lighting up my dreams
In the heavens the stars parade like faithful people, the waters are getting closer and cottony
Wipe, wipe, clinging
Drink, drink, the stream
You are the light
I'm the shadow
Marking your edges, I don't see anything, I don't know where to stand, the deluge took you
**************
The video is outstanding. There are a number of ingenious references to several of Eurasia's leading media cultures, as well as to Hideaki Anno's live-action film, Ceremony Day, all of which are far too good to spoil here.
Sunday, May 4, 2014
Against the Europe of The Plutocrats, For the Europe of the People
At long last, the people of Europe are beginning to push back against euroliberalism and its toxic byproducts, neo-nationalism, militarism and war. Celebrated economist Emmanuel Piketty issued this call for transforming Europe's economic policies from nightmarish austerity into eco-friendly growth.
The folks at Progressive Economy issued a similar call for change (text available here).
Finally, Yanis Varoufakis endorsed Alexis Tsipras for the post of President of the European Commission.
2014 is the year when Europe must decide: continued austerity means ever more wealth in the hands of ever fewer plutocrats, and a downwards spiral of mass misery, ethnic hatred, compensatory militarism, violence and ultimately war (imagine Ukraine's troubles, magnified by one million) swamp everyone else. The alternative is an end to austerity, and eco-investment in prosperity for all.
The folks at Progressive Economy issued a similar call for change (text available here).
Finally, Yanis Varoufakis endorsed Alexis Tsipras for the post of President of the European Commission.
2014 is the year when Europe must decide: continued austerity means ever more wealth in the hands of ever fewer plutocrats, and a downwards spiral of mass misery, ethnic hatred, compensatory militarism, violence and ultimately war (imagine Ukraine's troubles, magnified by one million) swamp everyone else. The alternative is an end to austerity, and eco-investment in prosperity for all.
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Putin's Murderers
OK. I have now officially had it with Putinism's thuggery, lies and now mass murder... and I'm not even Ukrainian.
For reasons best left to the psychohistorians, certain Leftist have convinced themselves that Ukraine's February uprising was led by "fascists" and that the uprising in eastern Ukraine is "people's democracy". This is hogwash so toxic and noncredible, that I must seriously ask what psychotropic drugs they are using, because they are hallucinating.
Ukraine has an elected parliament, the press is remarkably free, and citizens can demonstrate and assemble in public spaces as they wish.
So why all the trouble? Because for the past month, Putinism's state-owned media has run the most despicable and toxic lies, smearing the people of Ukraine as anti-Semitic hooligans and latterday Nazis. Never mind the fact that anti-semitism is far more prevalent in Russia than in Ukraine. And never mind the fact that there is no fascist junta running Ukraine, just an interim President who will step down soon. In February, Ukrainians peacefully overthrew Yanukovych's thuggish kleptocracy, which had bankrupted the country by stealing energy-rents from the gas pipelines. Presidential elections are scheduled for May 25, just three weeks from now.
The only instability has been caused by Putin's regime. Since February 28, Putinism has armed, trained and financed thugs -- including this Russian colonel who lives in Moscow -- to terrorize locals, sack police stations, kidnap neutral OSCE observers (they've since been released), and torture and murder dissidents.
Most recently and most horribly, pro-Kremlin thugs used automatic weapons to shoot unarmed marchers in Odessa (close-up here).
Yes, those are automatic rifles being used for mass murder.
Enraged by the killings and by a complete abdication of police responsibility (some police may have been pro-Kremlin sympathizers, but most probably just lost their nerve), a pro-Ukrainian crowd spontaneously gathered, threw rocks at the shooters, and chased them back to their home base in a local government building.
What happened next is less clear. We know the two sides threw Molotov cocktails at each other, the building caught fire, and that somewhere between fifteen and thirty people inside died of smoke inhalation. The responsibility for the fire is unclear -- none of the video evidence taken by citizen journalists at the scene suggests anything like a conscious plan to burn down the building. One of the videos does show a fire starting inside the building on the third floor, inside an unbroken window. There were no pro-Ukrainians inside the building at the time, so it could be that the pro-Kremlin crowd accidentally started the fire by dropping or mishandling a Molotov of their own -- hopefully the EU will do an independent investigation to determine precisely what happened.
Once the building caught fire, the pro-Ukrainian crowd spontaneously organized a rescue mission, climbing into the building and saving countless pro-Kremlin protesters. Yes, that's right -- even after being shot at, the Ukrainians did the right thing, and saved as many lives as they could.
This is what Putinism has consistently failed to understand about Ukraine, or about the Ukrainian revolution. Ordinary Ukrainians are not following orders from Washington or carrying out some malign CIA plot. They are simply acting like the free citizens of a genuine democracy.
Putinism's brief window of opportunity to covertly destabilize its neighbor has passed.
If Putin's generals are seriously contemplating military action, they should look closely at the footage from Odessa. Those young Ukrainians were not afraid of confronting AK-47s with cobblestones. You don't even want to think of the hellstorm they would unleash with precision anti-tank and anti-air weapons. If history teaches one lesson, it's that anyone who invades a Slavic nation digs their own grave. You have been warned.
For reasons best left to the psychohistorians, certain Leftist have convinced themselves that Ukraine's February uprising was led by "fascists" and that the uprising in eastern Ukraine is "people's democracy". This is hogwash so toxic and noncredible, that I must seriously ask what psychotropic drugs they are using, because they are hallucinating.
Ukraine has an elected parliament, the press is remarkably free, and citizens can demonstrate and assemble in public spaces as they wish.
So why all the trouble? Because for the past month, Putinism's state-owned media has run the most despicable and toxic lies, smearing the people of Ukraine as anti-Semitic hooligans and latterday Nazis. Never mind the fact that anti-semitism is far more prevalent in Russia than in Ukraine. And never mind the fact that there is no fascist junta running Ukraine, just an interim President who will step down soon. In February, Ukrainians peacefully overthrew Yanukovych's thuggish kleptocracy, which had bankrupted the country by stealing energy-rents from the gas pipelines. Presidential elections are scheduled for May 25, just three weeks from now.
The only instability has been caused by Putin's regime. Since February 28, Putinism has armed, trained and financed thugs -- including this Russian colonel who lives in Moscow -- to terrorize locals, sack police stations, kidnap neutral OSCE observers (they've since been released), and torture and murder dissidents.
Most recently and most horribly, pro-Kremlin thugs used automatic weapons to shoot unarmed marchers in Odessa (close-up here).
Yes, those are automatic rifles being used for mass murder.
Enraged by the killings and by a complete abdication of police responsibility (some police may have been pro-Kremlin sympathizers, but most probably just lost their nerve), a pro-Ukrainian crowd spontaneously gathered, threw rocks at the shooters, and chased them back to their home base in a local government building.
What happened next is less clear. We know the two sides threw Molotov cocktails at each other, the building caught fire, and that somewhere between fifteen and thirty people inside died of smoke inhalation. The responsibility for the fire is unclear -- none of the video evidence taken by citizen journalists at the scene suggests anything like a conscious plan to burn down the building. One of the videos does show a fire starting inside the building on the third floor, inside an unbroken window. There were no pro-Ukrainians inside the building at the time, so it could be that the pro-Kremlin crowd accidentally started the fire by dropping or mishandling a Molotov of their own -- hopefully the EU will do an independent investigation to determine precisely what happened.
Once the building caught fire, the pro-Ukrainian crowd spontaneously organized a rescue mission, climbing into the building and saving countless pro-Kremlin protesters. Yes, that's right -- even after being shot at, the Ukrainians did the right thing, and saved as many lives as they could.
This is what Putinism has consistently failed to understand about Ukraine, or about the Ukrainian revolution. Ordinary Ukrainians are not following orders from Washington or carrying out some malign CIA plot. They are simply acting like the free citizens of a genuine democracy.
Putinism's brief window of opportunity to covertly destabilize its neighbor has passed.
If Putin's generals are seriously contemplating military action, they should look closely at the footage from Odessa. Those young Ukrainians were not afraid of confronting AK-47s with cobblestones. You don't even want to think of the hellstorm they would unleash with precision anti-tank and anti-air weapons. If history teaches one lesson, it's that anyone who invades a Slavic nation digs their own grave. You have been warned.
Friday, May 2, 2014
OdessaMaidan
Live from Ukraine, it's Act 2 of the Ukrainian revolution -- the moment when the seeds of the EuroMaidan, planted during the hard winter of 2013, begin to sprout over the rest of Ukraine. In Odessa, one of the Kremlin's rent-a-mobs tried to disrupt a pro-unity march with brickbats and violence. One of Putinism's thugs went so far as to shoot and kill a passerby (apparently, it was someone who was not part of the pro-unity march). In response, the people of Odessa flooded into the streets, building barricades and tossing rocks.
Watch Odessa, magical city, home of Isaac Babel, Battleship Potemkin and the Duke, reclaim its dignity and humanity.
Watch Odessa, magical city, home of Isaac Babel, Battleship Potemkin and the Duke, reclaim its dignity and humanity.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Celebrating May Day: Baby Superpower (Citizen Journalism) Turns 3
One of the most surprising consequences of the rise of citizen journalism, which has now turned three years old -- and by citizen journalism, we mean the digital diffusion of the tools, skills, and distribution networks of traditional journalism among large numbers of citizens in almost every major nation on the planet -- is its effect on the work of traditional scholars, researchers, journalists and cultural theorists. Many of these latter have become obsolete almost overnight, for the simple reason that they do not understand the power of these new digital tools, and have ignored the proliferation of networked transnational audiences.
This first became obvious in the wake of the Arab Spring, which showed that nearly all the traditional observers and analysts of the Middle East were utterly wrong about... well, everything. Arab cultures are not innately reactionary or pro-dictatorship, women played a huge role in the various Arab revolutions, the masses organized themselves without leaders or authoritarian parties, and numerous facets of popular culture (everything from rap music to soccer clubs) generated lively forms of political contestation.
Why did the experts get it so wrong? For the most part, it was because most of them were following (some consciously, and some unconsciously) two of the most mainstream and widespread narrative stereotypes about the industrializing world. The first is what can be called negative Orientalism, and the second is positive Orientalism -- or put more pithily, Global Southophobia and Southophilia. The first is the toxic defamation of any aspect of an industrializing nation or society as regressive and evil (e.g. Islamophobia, Iranophobia or Sinophobia). The second is the equally toxic glorification of an industrializing nation as emancipatory and good.
These stereotypes are not new. They are the 21st century variants of those hoary chestnuts of 18th century Enlightenment thinking, the Oriental despot and the Noble Savage, respectively.
To see the toxic effects of Southophobia, consider the sad fate of Seymour Hersh, once the dean of US investigative journalism. Recently, Hersh went completely over the bend with crackpot allegations that Turkey's government was somehow responsible for the Assad dictatorship's murderous campaign of poison gas attacks on Syrian citizens. Hersh's only source of evidence for his allegations (reported on here) was insider government gossip.
But there is a massive trove of medical and forensic evidence, assembled by UN investigators and by Syrian citizen journalists, as to the real source of the chemical attacks: artillery shells fired from Assadist positions, shells which used massive amounts of sarin which only the Syrian government could stockpile, weaponize and deploy in the field (blogger Brown-Moses assembles the overwhelming evidence pointing to Assadist guilt here).
The simplest reason for Hersh's mistake is that he is still locked into a model of investigative journalism where the point is to get some government or corporate insider to leak some crucial piece of information. This strategy had some usefulness in the context of the Cold War-era mass media of the US, but doesn't work terribly well in the epoch of digital information abundance (Brown-Moses worked closely with a wide range of weapons and medical experts to uncover the truth). The deeper reason, though, is that Hersh clearly thinks of Turkey as a military dictatorship, a land of viziers and pashas.
This is absurd. Turkey is a democracy, with a vibrant free press and multiple forms of citizen mobilization and electoral contestation. It's far from a perfect democracy, with plenty of authoritarian legacies, everywhere from its inability to acknowledge the Ottoman genocide of Armenians to its mistreatment of its Kurdish citizens, but it has undergone a sweeping and genuine democratization over the past twenty years.
The second major stereotype is Southophoria. One of the best examples of this ailment is the amazing inability of self-proclaimed Leftists to comprehend that tinpot dictators such as Qaddafi, Ben Ali, and Assad were never anti-capitalist, but were brutal comprador thugs, postmodern paddyrollers who ran their countries like semi-feudal plantations for the ultimate benefit of Big Money. A more subtle and sophisticated version of this same disease is apparent in the recent work of historian Stephen F. Cohen.
Cohen was once a cogent and reasonably well-informed observer of Russian history and society. More recently, however, he has become a completely uncritical cheerleader of Putinism, the toxic and regressive ideology of ethnonationalism and Russo-imperialism which legitimates the rule of Russia's thuggish siloviki and plundering plutocrats. The latest sign of this degeneration is Cohen's truly lunatic accusation that Obama's mild sanctions on Russia (travel bans on a few high-ranking officials and small banks, nothing major) are tantamount to starting a second Cold War.
Really, Cohen? Are you unaware that Russia invaded the Crimean district of Ukraine with 20,000 troops, despite there being no threat to ethnic Russians or to Russia itself? You do realize that existing national boundaries cannot simply be unilaterally revoked by armed force, without triggering the most terrible wars? Are you aware that Putinism's undemocratic, state-controlled media continues to broadcast the most outrageous lies and threats against the people of Ukraine, including sponsoring armed, violent thugs who are murdering Ukrainian citizens? Or that Putinism has criminalized Russia's internet, making dissent impossible? Or that Putin's puppet parliament authorized the use of Russian armed forces on the territory of Ukraine?
The job of historians is to weigh and evaluate objective evidence. All the objective evidence at our disposal suggests that Russian imperialism is as ugly, murderous and poisonous as any other imperialism on this planet. If Cohen has evidence to suggest otherwise, then by all means present it. Otherwise, his legitimation of the crimes of Russian imperialism is as despicable as the legitimation of the criminal US invasion of Iraq by US media pundits and Orientalist ideologues.
This first became obvious in the wake of the Arab Spring, which showed that nearly all the traditional observers and analysts of the Middle East were utterly wrong about... well, everything. Arab cultures are not innately reactionary or pro-dictatorship, women played a huge role in the various Arab revolutions, the masses organized themselves without leaders or authoritarian parties, and numerous facets of popular culture (everything from rap music to soccer clubs) generated lively forms of political contestation.
Why did the experts get it so wrong? For the most part, it was because most of them were following (some consciously, and some unconsciously) two of the most mainstream and widespread narrative stereotypes about the industrializing world. The first is what can be called negative Orientalism, and the second is positive Orientalism -- or put more pithily, Global Southophobia and Southophilia. The first is the toxic defamation of any aspect of an industrializing nation or society as regressive and evil (e.g. Islamophobia, Iranophobia or Sinophobia). The second is the equally toxic glorification of an industrializing nation as emancipatory and good.
These stereotypes are not new. They are the 21st century variants of those hoary chestnuts of 18th century Enlightenment thinking, the Oriental despot and the Noble Savage, respectively.
To see the toxic effects of Southophobia, consider the sad fate of Seymour Hersh, once the dean of US investigative journalism. Recently, Hersh went completely over the bend with crackpot allegations that Turkey's government was somehow responsible for the Assad dictatorship's murderous campaign of poison gas attacks on Syrian citizens. Hersh's only source of evidence for his allegations (reported on here) was insider government gossip.
But there is a massive trove of medical and forensic evidence, assembled by UN investigators and by Syrian citizen journalists, as to the real source of the chemical attacks: artillery shells fired from Assadist positions, shells which used massive amounts of sarin which only the Syrian government could stockpile, weaponize and deploy in the field (blogger Brown-Moses assembles the overwhelming evidence pointing to Assadist guilt here).
The simplest reason for Hersh's mistake is that he is still locked into a model of investigative journalism where the point is to get some government or corporate insider to leak some crucial piece of information. This strategy had some usefulness in the context of the Cold War-era mass media of the US, but doesn't work terribly well in the epoch of digital information abundance (Brown-Moses worked closely with a wide range of weapons and medical experts to uncover the truth). The deeper reason, though, is that Hersh clearly thinks of Turkey as a military dictatorship, a land of viziers and pashas.
This is absurd. Turkey is a democracy, with a vibrant free press and multiple forms of citizen mobilization and electoral contestation. It's far from a perfect democracy, with plenty of authoritarian legacies, everywhere from its inability to acknowledge the Ottoman genocide of Armenians to its mistreatment of its Kurdish citizens, but it has undergone a sweeping and genuine democratization over the past twenty years.
The second major stereotype is Southophoria. One of the best examples of this ailment is the amazing inability of self-proclaimed Leftists to comprehend that tinpot dictators such as Qaddafi, Ben Ali, and Assad were never anti-capitalist, but were brutal comprador thugs, postmodern paddyrollers who ran their countries like semi-feudal plantations for the ultimate benefit of Big Money. A more subtle and sophisticated version of this same disease is apparent in the recent work of historian Stephen F. Cohen.
Cohen was once a cogent and reasonably well-informed observer of Russian history and society. More recently, however, he has become a completely uncritical cheerleader of Putinism, the toxic and regressive ideology of ethnonationalism and Russo-imperialism which legitimates the rule of Russia's thuggish siloviki and plundering plutocrats. The latest sign of this degeneration is Cohen's truly lunatic accusation that Obama's mild sanctions on Russia (travel bans on a few high-ranking officials and small banks, nothing major) are tantamount to starting a second Cold War.
Really, Cohen? Are you unaware that Russia invaded the Crimean district of Ukraine with 20,000 troops, despite there being no threat to ethnic Russians or to Russia itself? You do realize that existing national boundaries cannot simply be unilaterally revoked by armed force, without triggering the most terrible wars? Are you aware that Putinism's undemocratic, state-controlled media continues to broadcast the most outrageous lies and threats against the people of Ukraine, including sponsoring armed, violent thugs who are murdering Ukrainian citizens? Or that Putinism has criminalized Russia's internet, making dissent impossible? Or that Putin's puppet parliament authorized the use of Russian armed forces on the territory of Ukraine?
The job of historians is to weigh and evaluate objective evidence. All the objective evidence at our disposal suggests that Russian imperialism is as ugly, murderous and poisonous as any other imperialism on this planet. If Cohen has evidence to suggest otherwise, then by all means present it. Otherwise, his legitimation of the crimes of Russian imperialism is as despicable as the legitimation of the criminal US invasion of Iraq by US media pundits and Orientalist ideologues.
Friday, April 25, 2014
Digital Ukraine 300, Putinism -500
The scorecard keeps getting more and more lopsided. A few days ago, Russia, the EU, the US and Ukraine agreed to a peace deal calling for a cessation of violence in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine has scrupulously avoided bloodshed. For their part, Putinism's goons beat up and jailed Vice reporter Simon Ostrovsky (later released, thank goodness), and then tortured and murdered a Horlivka councilman and a young Kiev student (also see this excellent LA Times article). To top it all off, a separatist or Spetznaz soldier blew up a Ukrainian helicopter and transport jet parked at the Kramatorsk airport.
I've said this before, but will say it again: by mid-April, the window for Putinism's Operation Gobble-Up-Ukraine-Like-Crimea has closed. Everything Putinism is doing -- and I mean literally everything -- is failing. This is true locally as well as geopolitically.
Every day, ordinary Ukrainians are becoming more organized, more persistent, and more determined to save their nation. After the above-mentioned murders, the authorities cleared out the separatist roadblocks around Sloviansk and blockaded the small town.
After the attack on the airfield, Ukraine's Antonov plane firm announced it was giving three refurbished planes to the army free of charge (Ukraine also has the capacity to produce its own tanks and combat helicopters, it should be noted). Independent media activists have now organized Ukraine's first English-language media channel, available here: http://un1.tv/ukraine
There is also a noticeable split observable in the local protest movements in Donetsk, wherein the citizens who were genuinely protesting against the long-standing indifference of the Kiev authorities to their plight (and they have every right to protest peacefully) have almost universally rejected separatism and violence, and are calling instead for regional reforms.
The less popular support Putinism's thugs have, the more extreme their tactics have become. Just hours ago, these thugs kidnapped eight members of the enlarged OSCE team charged with being impartial observers in eastern Ukraine, and are apparently holding them in a jail somewhere. According to the OSCE's twitter feed, the captives consist of 4 Germans, 1 Czech, 1 Danish, 1 Polish, and 1 Swedish citizen.
I really couldn't think of a better way to convince the citizens of Germany, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland and Sweden -- all model democracies and core countries of the European Union -- that the siloviki are not serious about defusing the situation, and to impose heavy-duty sanctions on Russia's already ailing economy.
Ukraine has scrupulously avoided bloodshed. For their part, Putinism's goons beat up and jailed Vice reporter Simon Ostrovsky (later released, thank goodness), and then tortured and murdered a Horlivka councilman and a young Kiev student (also see this excellent LA Times article). To top it all off, a separatist or Spetznaz soldier blew up a Ukrainian helicopter and transport jet parked at the Kramatorsk airport.
I've said this before, but will say it again: by mid-April, the window for Putinism's Operation Gobble-Up-Ukraine-Like-Crimea has closed. Everything Putinism is doing -- and I mean literally everything -- is failing. This is true locally as well as geopolitically.
Every day, ordinary Ukrainians are becoming more organized, more persistent, and more determined to save their nation. After the above-mentioned murders, the authorities cleared out the separatist roadblocks around Sloviansk and blockaded the small town.
After the attack on the airfield, Ukraine's Antonov plane firm announced it was giving three refurbished planes to the army free of charge (Ukraine also has the capacity to produce its own tanks and combat helicopters, it should be noted). Independent media activists have now organized Ukraine's first English-language media channel, available here: http://un1.tv/ukraine
There is also a noticeable split observable in the local protest movements in Donetsk, wherein the citizens who were genuinely protesting against the long-standing indifference of the Kiev authorities to their plight (and they have every right to protest peacefully) have almost universally rejected separatism and violence, and are calling instead for regional reforms.
The less popular support Putinism's thugs have, the more extreme their tactics have become. Just hours ago, these thugs kidnapped eight members of the enlarged OSCE team charged with being impartial observers in eastern Ukraine, and are apparently holding them in a jail somewhere. According to the OSCE's twitter feed, the captives consist of 4 Germans, 1 Czech, 1 Danish, 1 Polish, and 1 Swedish citizen.
I really couldn't think of a better way to convince the citizens of Germany, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland and Sweden -- all model democracies and core countries of the European Union -- that the siloviki are not serious about defusing the situation, and to impose heavy-duty sanctions on Russia's already ailing economy.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Digital Ukraine 100, Putinism 0
Love and respect to the people of Ukraine. While Putin indulged in his latest version of talk show Francoism (Russia's siloviki-plutocrats have turned the Russian economy into a stagnant, lower middle-income semiperiphery masquerading as a Great Power), Ukrainians are slowly but surely putting their country back together.
This is not to downplay the threat of Putinism's crime spree. There is incontrovertible proof that Russian agents ambushed and murdered one of Ukraine's top anti-terror officers in the countryside near Slaviansk (you can listen to a tape recording of the thugs bragging about the murder here).
This is a despicable act of war by a sovereign nation against another sovereign nation.
Instead of imploding, Digital Ukraine has been slowly but surely rebooting the entire country. The citizens of Kharkov, Odessa and Kherson all rejected Putinism's Russo-imperialism from the very beginning. Now Luzhansk and Dnipropetrovsk have organized themselves via citizen mobilizations against Putinism's destabilization campaign. Former Ukrainian oligarchs have turned into patriotic, socially responsible entrepreneurs, legendary Ukrainian special forces officer Vasyl Krutov (the Ukrainian equivalent of Lt. Col. Campbell in Kojima's Metal Gear Solid, for those of you familiar with that franchise) has returned to organize Ukraine's counter-terrorism efforts, citizens who were protesting against the Yanukovych government are now staffing roadblocks to ensure public order, and ordinary Ukrainian soldiers have been acting with dignity and restraint. Most remarkable of all, town square meetings are now taking place in Luzhansk and Donetsk, as Ukrainian citizens are beginning to take their destiny into their own hands.
Putinism is now faced with a startling lack of support in all the major cities -- not even Donetsk, Yanokovych's old turf and the least happy with the Ukrainian revolution, wants anything to do with becoming a Russian province. Putinism's next tactic was to incite mayhem in small towns around the cities, most obviously Slaviansk and Mariupol. Typically, they used covert squads of infiltrators (mostly GRU and Spetznaz soldiers) who blend in with the local population. Once there, they armed, financed and commanded local separatists to wreak havoc. The aim was to create enough bloodshed and mayhem to justify further colonial adventurism.
Here, too, Putinism's tactical ability to create spectacular, short-term media stunts recoiled into complete and abject long-term failure. While the media was focused on Slaviansk, where armed separatists hijacked a few APCs, an attempt by a violent rent-a-mob to overrun a military base near Mariupol during the night of April 16 was defeated and a number of thugs were arrested. Krutov's team has been arresting Putinism's infil squads with precision and efficiency, and with an absolute minimum loss of life.
We'll see what Putinism's next move is, but time is running out on their infil tactics. The longer this goes on, the more of their agents will be caught and exposed, the more thuggish their infil tactics will have to become, and the angrier they will make ordinary Ukrainians who, more than anything else, just want Russia to leave them the &%* alone.
EDIT: The above was posted a couple hours before a Geneva conference between Russia, Ukraine, the US and EU. The result was a complete and total Ukrainian victory. Putinism is calling off its attack dogs, all peaceful demonstrators will be reprieved, and Ukraine will be left alone to solve its own problems. My best guess: in just 48 hours, Krutov's capable team had completely demolished the spy network Putinism had spent fourteen years constructing in Ukraine, and was about to go public with embarrassing details on dozens of captured GRU agents. That would have triggered massive sanctions on Russia's already shaky economy.
Thank goodness it's all over. Now Ukraine can start to fix its problems, and Russia's citizens can start to press for genuine democratic change.
This is not to downplay the threat of Putinism's crime spree. There is incontrovertible proof that Russian agents ambushed and murdered one of Ukraine's top anti-terror officers in the countryside near Slaviansk (you can listen to a tape recording of the thugs bragging about the murder here).
This is a despicable act of war by a sovereign nation against another sovereign nation.
Instead of imploding, Digital Ukraine has been slowly but surely rebooting the entire country. The citizens of Kharkov, Odessa and Kherson all rejected Putinism's Russo-imperialism from the very beginning. Now Luzhansk and Dnipropetrovsk have organized themselves via citizen mobilizations against Putinism's destabilization campaign. Former Ukrainian oligarchs have turned into patriotic, socially responsible entrepreneurs, legendary Ukrainian special forces officer Vasyl Krutov (the Ukrainian equivalent of Lt. Col. Campbell in Kojima's Metal Gear Solid, for those of you familiar with that franchise) has returned to organize Ukraine's counter-terrorism efforts, citizens who were protesting against the Yanukovych government are now staffing roadblocks to ensure public order, and ordinary Ukrainian soldiers have been acting with dignity and restraint. Most remarkable of all, town square meetings are now taking place in Luzhansk and Donetsk, as Ukrainian citizens are beginning to take their destiny into their own hands.
Putinism is now faced with a startling lack of support in all the major cities -- not even Donetsk, Yanokovych's old turf and the least happy with the Ukrainian revolution, wants anything to do with becoming a Russian province. Putinism's next tactic was to incite mayhem in small towns around the cities, most obviously Slaviansk and Mariupol. Typically, they used covert squads of infiltrators (mostly GRU and Spetznaz soldiers) who blend in with the local population. Once there, they armed, financed and commanded local separatists to wreak havoc. The aim was to create enough bloodshed and mayhem to justify further colonial adventurism.
Here, too, Putinism's tactical ability to create spectacular, short-term media stunts recoiled into complete and abject long-term failure. While the media was focused on Slaviansk, where armed separatists hijacked a few APCs, an attempt by a violent rent-a-mob to overrun a military base near Mariupol during the night of April 16 was defeated and a number of thugs were arrested. Krutov's team has been arresting Putinism's infil squads with precision and efficiency, and with an absolute minimum loss of life.
We'll see what Putinism's next move is, but time is running out on their infil tactics. The longer this goes on, the more of their agents will be caught and exposed, the more thuggish their infil tactics will have to become, and the angrier they will make ordinary Ukrainians who, more than anything else, just want Russia to leave them the &%* alone.
EDIT: The above was posted a couple hours before a Geneva conference between Russia, Ukraine, the US and EU. The result was a complete and total Ukrainian victory. Putinism is calling off its attack dogs, all peaceful demonstrators will be reprieved, and Ukraine will be left alone to solve its own problems. My best guess: in just 48 hours, Krutov's capable team had completely demolished the spy network Putinism had spent fourteen years constructing in Ukraine, and was about to go public with embarrassing details on dozens of captured GRU agents. That would have triggered massive sanctions on Russia's already shaky economy.
Thank goodness it's all over. Now Ukraine can start to fix its problems, and Russia's citizens can start to press for genuine democratic change.
Monday, April 14, 2014
The Hours Are Now Minutes...
A Wiktionary entry from 2024 I really, really don't want to see:
"Plutinism". [noun]. The class dictatorship of gangster plutocrats who monopolize a nation-state's wealth, politics and broadcast media, and then invent bogus wars to safeguard their looting spree. First applied by the US plutocrats responsible for the 2003-2011 Iraqicide, later copied by the Russian plutocrats responsible for the Ukrainocide. Also see: failed empires, Russian collapse of 2019, US bankruptcy of 2022.
"Plutinism". [noun]. The class dictatorship of gangster plutocrats who monopolize a nation-state's wealth, politics and broadcast media, and then invent bogus wars to safeguard their looting spree. First applied by the US plutocrats responsible for the 2003-2011 Iraqicide, later copied by the Russian plutocrats responsible for the Ukrainocide. Also see: failed empires, Russian collapse of 2019, US bankruptcy of 2022.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
War, Ever Closer
From the phantom state, to the phantom empire, to the phantom annexation of Crimea -- and now comes Putinism's phantom colonial war on Ukraine: five or six thousand rent-a-thugs, supplemented by a thousand or so GRU and Spetznaz with state-of-the-art Russian weaponry, have occupied a few buildings in eastern Ukraine, mostly small towns with deeply corrupt police forces. In response, the interim government is mobilizing its army in preparation for a crackdown, albeit with a promise of amnesty for protesters who lay down their arms (there are some, though they are a minority compared to the rent-a-thugs).
More importantly, the Euromaidan is now spreading to the eastern cities. Large pro-Ukraine protests are starting to occur in the east for the first time ever, and will start to snowball, now that Putinism's thugs are resorting to open violence and murder.
I've said this before, but will say it again: Crimea is the only annexation Russia will ever get away. Eastern Ukraine is not Crimea. The region has been majority ethnically Ukrainian for centuries, which means the only way Russian could annex these regions is through open military invasion and subsequent ethnic genocide. Ukraine would resist with a devastating guerilla war, supplemented by massive EU military aid and a world economic blockade on Russia.
It's your move, Putin. You can keep your ill-gotten gains, or you can start a war which will destroy your economy, your Presidency, and eventually the entire Russian Federation -- because China is licking its chops on your doorstep, just waiting for a chance to roll over Siberia. If you truly want to be Russia's Second Napoleon, Li Xinping will be your Bismarck.
More importantly, the Euromaidan is now spreading to the eastern cities. Large pro-Ukraine protests are starting to occur in the east for the first time ever, and will start to snowball, now that Putinism's thugs are resorting to open violence and murder.
I've said this before, but will say it again: Crimea is the only annexation Russia will ever get away. Eastern Ukraine is not Crimea. The region has been majority ethnically Ukrainian for centuries, which means the only way Russian could annex these regions is through open military invasion and subsequent ethnic genocide. Ukraine would resist with a devastating guerilla war, supplemented by massive EU military aid and a world economic blockade on Russia.
It's your move, Putin. You can keep your ill-gotten gains, or you can start a war which will destroy your economy, your Presidency, and eventually the entire Russian Federation -- because China is licking its chops on your doorstep, just waiting for a chance to roll over Siberia. If you truly want to be Russia's Second Napoleon, Li Xinping will be your Bismarck.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
The 18th Brumaire of Vladimir Putin
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Alle Menschen Werden Brueder/Schwestern
Odessa musicians protest against neoliberal imperialism. We see your tanks, Putin, and raise you a symphony!
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Fall of the Tricolor, Rise of the Trident
Baalbek went dark. Hero Col. Mamchur gave a final speech to his troops, and allowed the Russian invaders to seize the base without bloodshed. It takes the most supreme courage for a career soldier to put down the gun. But it was the right thing to do. Not a single person deserves to die for Putinism's sordid and verminous land grab. (At another base, one soldier did die: an ethnic Russian who was loyal to Ukraine was shot in the heart by one of Putinism's snipers. What a perfect metaphor for the despicable amorality, thuggery, and gangsterism of the whole operation.)
Farewell, Russian democracy. We will not see you again for a generation or more.
Farewell, Russian developmental state. The seeds sown by Medvedev's presidency, few as they were, will now wither quietly in the darkness.
The first Russian Empire lasted three hundred years.
The second, lightly Sovietized version of this empire lasted seventy years.
The current and final one -- Russia's energy-rent empire -- will have a far briefer lifespan.
Oh, the cruel paradoxes of 21st century dialectics.
Putinism, seemingly the big winner, is in reality a massive loser. It will learn all the wrong lessons from its reckless grab and seemingly easy victory, which will incur immense current and future financial, cultural, political and economic costs, and will compound its already severe economic troubles with even more idiotic and reckless gambles, which will cement Russia's subaltern geopolitical status for decades to come.
Ukraine, seemingly the big loser, wins. It wins because it has learned the power of dignity, of restraint, and most of all, of nonviolent civility. It will now flourish, having finally freed itself from its autocratic past. How ironic that the same lands once scourged by Slavic famine and tyranny are now the heartlands of Slavic renewal and democracy.
I said just a couple weeks ago that Digital Ukraine was going to surprise the world. They already have -- but there's so much more to come. They will do more than just surprise the world. They are going to change the world. And some day, nobody can know just when, that change will come to Russia, too.
Farewell, Russian democracy. We will not see you again for a generation or more.
Farewell, Russian developmental state. The seeds sown by Medvedev's presidency, few as they were, will now wither quietly in the darkness.
The first Russian Empire lasted three hundred years.
The second, lightly Sovietized version of this empire lasted seventy years.
The current and final one -- Russia's energy-rent empire -- will have a far briefer lifespan.
Oh, the cruel paradoxes of 21st century dialectics.
Putinism, seemingly the big winner, is in reality a massive loser. It will learn all the wrong lessons from its reckless grab and seemingly easy victory, which will incur immense current and future financial, cultural, political and economic costs, and will compound its already severe economic troubles with even more idiotic and reckless gambles, which will cement Russia's subaltern geopolitical status for decades to come.
Ukraine, seemingly the big loser, wins. It wins because it has learned the power of dignity, of restraint, and most of all, of nonviolent civility. It will now flourish, having finally freed itself from its autocratic past. How ironic that the same lands once scourged by Slavic famine and tyranny are now the heartlands of Slavic renewal and democracy.
I said just a couple weeks ago that Digital Ukraine was going to surprise the world. They already have -- but there's so much more to come. They will do more than just surprise the world. They are going to change the world. And some day, nobody can know just when, that change will come to Russia, too.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
The Days Have Become Hours
Doom. It's almost unavoidable. My rational brain understands the geopolitical, historical, social necessity of it all: when banksterism runs amok in the core, gangsterism will run amok in the periphery. Putinism's tanks will roll on March 21 and then darkness will fall on Eurasia for a generation.
I knew for a long, long time that this day would come. It all goes back to the moment in 2003 when the US oiligarchy invaded Iraq. A gangster faction of the US empire, drunk on illegitimate power, had completely torn up the rules of the post-1945 world-system, the checks and balances which kept the world somewhat stable. Just as euroliberalism's eurozone was an economic disaster waiting to happen, so too was the US oiligarchy's Terror War a disaster waiting to happen.
I didn't know how or when catastrophe would strike. I just knew Bad Things (TM, Pat Pending) were going to happen.
* * * * * *
More commentary tomorrow. And yes, that Brumaire essay is almost done. It's going to be a barnburner. I do hope that, at the very least, I get put on Putinism's "banned from entry" list.
But I want to say something else.
There's a special layer of hell for those self-proclaimed Leftists, progressives and other folks -- let's call them the Leftoids -- who claim to be critical of the Wall Street plutocrats and US empire -- but who fall over themselves to defend the thuggery of smaller imperialisms.
The list includes fans of Qaddafi's rule of terror, who constantly smear ordinary Libyans as wild savages and write long screeds glorifying the Jamahiriya's public services (which were universally appalling).
Then there are the fans of Assad's ghastly fascist state, who constantly smear ordinary Syrians as takfiri brutes and caricature all Arabs as primitive tribes.
And now the fans of Putinism's Anschluss, just the first of a flood of geopolitical disasters which the demise of neoliberalism is unleashing on this unhappy world. These people cannot be bothered to watch footage, read interviews, or listen to stories of Ukraine's peaceful protest movement of ordinary citizens against plutocratic thugs. Nor can they be bothered to read the copious accounts of Putinism (the joint rule of siloviki thugs and thieving plutocrats) trampling on Russia's constitutional right to free speech, free assembly, and free political participation.
Our plutocrat-owned mass media constantly proclaims the US empire to be good, and all other empires to be bad. Leftoids reverse this and proclaim all other empires good, and the US empire bad.
Bad does not have a national flag.
Bad is just bad.
And its unthinking defense is what authorizes the still worse to come.
I knew for a long, long time that this day would come. It all goes back to the moment in 2003 when the US oiligarchy invaded Iraq. A gangster faction of the US empire, drunk on illegitimate power, had completely torn up the rules of the post-1945 world-system, the checks and balances which kept the world somewhat stable. Just as euroliberalism's eurozone was an economic disaster waiting to happen, so too was the US oiligarchy's Terror War a disaster waiting to happen.
I didn't know how or when catastrophe would strike. I just knew Bad Things (TM, Pat Pending) were going to happen.
* * * * * *
More commentary tomorrow. And yes, that Brumaire essay is almost done. It's going to be a barnburner. I do hope that, at the very least, I get put on Putinism's "banned from entry" list.
But I want to say something else.
There's a special layer of hell for those self-proclaimed Leftists, progressives and other folks -- let's call them the Leftoids -- who claim to be critical of the Wall Street plutocrats and US empire -- but who fall over themselves to defend the thuggery of smaller imperialisms.
The list includes fans of Qaddafi's rule of terror, who constantly smear ordinary Libyans as wild savages and write long screeds glorifying the Jamahiriya's public services (which were universally appalling).
Then there are the fans of Assad's ghastly fascist state, who constantly smear ordinary Syrians as takfiri brutes and caricature all Arabs as primitive tribes.
And now the fans of Putinism's Anschluss, just the first of a flood of geopolitical disasters which the demise of neoliberalism is unleashing on this unhappy world. These people cannot be bothered to watch footage, read interviews, or listen to stories of Ukraine's peaceful protest movement of ordinary citizens against plutocratic thugs. Nor can they be bothered to read the copious accounts of Putinism (the joint rule of siloviki thugs and thieving plutocrats) trampling on Russia's constitutional right to free speech, free assembly, and free political participation.
Our plutocrat-owned mass media constantly proclaims the US empire to be good, and all other empires to be bad. Leftoids reverse this and proclaim all other empires good, and the US empire bad.
Bad does not have a national flag.
Bad is just bad.
And its unthinking defense is what authorizes the still worse to come.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Darkness
Russia Today is no longer a credible outlet of anything other than whatever lies Russo-imperialism feels like telling to itself. Rosie Gray has the gory details here.
* * * * *
More on Kurchenko's crimes -- he's one of the gangsters who destroyed Ukraine's economy.
* * * * *
Olga Mikhajliuk has this excellent story from occupied Crimea.
* * * * *
The Russian protest group P-Riot were originally just anarchistic provocateurs. But even their apolitical anarchism has earned them open attacks by government thugs - the most recent is documented here. Look closely at the faces of the youths who beat up a couple of unarmed, defenseless women. Look at how they revel like the disgusting gangsters they are, and even take photos for their friends.
In my nightmares, I see them still laughing as they get into their tanks, thinking it will be a joyride to Kiev. In my nightmares, I see state-sponsored parades blessing their holy war. In my nightmares, state-appointed TV presenters will tell them they are fighting small groups of Banderites, Nazis, and CIA agents, that they'll be greeted with flowers as liberators, that everyone will live happily ever after. They will beat lots of unarmed young women and even get to wear camouflage uniforms. In my nightmares, they stop laughing after twenty-four hours. That's when their APCs and tanks start burning, as the young people of Ukraine tear them apart with sophisticated anti-tank weapons. Their laughter turns into the death-mask of millions.
There are only days to stop the nightmare.
* * * * *
More on Kurchenko's crimes -- he's one of the gangsters who destroyed Ukraine's economy.
* * * * *
Olga Mikhajliuk has this excellent story from occupied Crimea.
* * * * *
The Russian protest group P-Riot were originally just anarchistic provocateurs. But even their apolitical anarchism has earned them open attacks by government thugs - the most recent is documented here. Look closely at the faces of the youths who beat up a couple of unarmed, defenseless women. Look at how they revel like the disgusting gangsters they are, and even take photos for their friends.
In my nightmares, I see them still laughing as they get into their tanks, thinking it will be a joyride to Kiev. In my nightmares, I see state-sponsored parades blessing their holy war. In my nightmares, state-appointed TV presenters will tell them they are fighting small groups of Banderites, Nazis, and CIA agents, that they'll be greeted with flowers as liberators, that everyone will live happily ever after. They will beat lots of unarmed young women and even get to wear camouflage uniforms. In my nightmares, they stop laughing after twenty-four hours. That's when their APCs and tanks start burning, as the young people of Ukraine tear them apart with sophisticated anti-tank weapons. Their laughter turns into the death-mask of millions.
There are only days to stop the nightmare.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Countries Which The Gods Wish To Destroy Are First Given Excessive Oil-Rents
The Russian internet is going dark. This will have indescribably bad effects.
Russia's single greatest economic asset is not its energy sector, which is burdened by legacy investments, transportation issues, and rapidly increasing production costs, and is in any case simply not big enough to drive a middle-income economy. Russia's ace card is its software sector, home to world-class firms such as Kaspersky and Yandex.
But if Russia takes over the Crimea, and all the evidence suggests this is indeed the plan -- then Russia's software sector is over. Done. Finished. No other country in the world will ever use Russia's digital services, ever.
Let me be clear.
I have enormous respect and appreciation for Russian culture, and enormous love for the long-suffering Russian people.
I am not a fan of NATO or of US imperialism.
But I'm watching a medium-sized country with smart intellectuals and pragmatic leaders commit geopolitical suicide in front of my astonished eyes. Seriously, did someone douse the Kremlin's water supply with LSD? Crimea is an economic albatross which costs the Ukrainian state $820 million in annual subsidies. It will cost Russia that much, plus billions of dollars more just to pay the pensioners. Throw in 200,000 angry Tatars, and you have a potential ethnic cauldron ten times worse than Chechnya. But wait, there's more: you'll also earn the undying hatred of every single Eastern European citizen, as well as a raft of EU sanctions.
One of the bitter jokes circulating around the Russian internet these days goes like this: "Don't exaggerate about the repression, we're not North Korea, we're only China." The punchline: "For now."
Not all is lost. Some Russian artists, writers and other luminaries are still resisting.
In 2012, Ukraine was an impoverished, failed state ruled by a crumbling autocracy, while Russia was a dynamic economy with a successful - albeit imperfect - democracy. If the annexation happens, Russia and Ukraine are going to switch places.
Russia's single greatest economic asset is not its energy sector, which is burdened by legacy investments, transportation issues, and rapidly increasing production costs, and is in any case simply not big enough to drive a middle-income economy. Russia's ace card is its software sector, home to world-class firms such as Kaspersky and Yandex.
But if Russia takes over the Crimea, and all the evidence suggests this is indeed the plan -- then Russia's software sector is over. Done. Finished. No other country in the world will ever use Russia's digital services, ever.
Let me be clear.
I have enormous respect and appreciation for Russian culture, and enormous love for the long-suffering Russian people.
I am not a fan of NATO or of US imperialism.
But I'm watching a medium-sized country with smart intellectuals and pragmatic leaders commit geopolitical suicide in front of my astonished eyes. Seriously, did someone douse the Kremlin's water supply with LSD? Crimea is an economic albatross which costs the Ukrainian state $820 million in annual subsidies. It will cost Russia that much, plus billions of dollars more just to pay the pensioners. Throw in 200,000 angry Tatars, and you have a potential ethnic cauldron ten times worse than Chechnya. But wait, there's more: you'll also earn the undying hatred of every single Eastern European citizen, as well as a raft of EU sanctions.
One of the bitter jokes circulating around the Russian internet these days goes like this: "Don't exaggerate about the repression, we're not North Korea, we're only China." The punchline: "For now."
Not all is lost. Some Russian artists, writers and other luminaries are still resisting.
In 2012, Ukraine was an impoverished, failed state ruled by a crumbling autocracy, while Russia was a dynamic economy with a successful - albeit imperfect - democracy. If the annexation happens, Russia and Ukraine are going to switch places.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Doom, Ever Closer
The madness spreads. The longstanding and well-respected editor of Lenta.ru, one of the few remaining independent websites in Russia, has been fired effectively immediately. Her replacement is a dismal Putinist hack. This isn't my reading of the story, this is the collective judgement of Lenta.ru's editors (link currently here - when this link gets taken down, which it most surely will, I'll provide a link to a copy of the original text). Lenta.ru will now turn into a cesspool of the most vile gay-bashing, revanchist, paranoid Russo-imperialism imaginable. The remaining spaces of online dissent will be crushed and sequestered.
It will get infinitely worse. I urge any Russian readers of this blog to seriously think about personal survival strategies. The lights are going out in your country and will not be lit again for a generation or more. (There are complex geopolitical reasons for this, can't provide more detail just yet. But I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I didn't give you the warning.)
Still writing the 18th Brumaire article, but here's a hint of what's to come: Putinism was the ideology of state-security siloviks who used gangster techniques to take back Russia's energy-rents from the Yeltsin-era oligarchs. That's fine if you're trying to rebuild your own country, but not OK when you start to attack other countries. In fact, the campaign to annex the Crimea is modeled pixel for pixel on the campaign against the oligarchs: sleazy PR, bald-faced lies, rabid ultranationalism, bribes of local officials. While we won't shed any tears for the oligarchs, the annexation of the Crimea is a dreadful disaster for Russia and Ukraine.
Putinism's inability to diversify the Russian economy away from energy-rents has triggered a deep and permanent economic and political crisis. While it is the richest member of the BRICs in per capita terms, it has the least diversified economy, and is in many ways the most vulnerable to the impending end of the petrocarbon age. Thus the authoritarian hurrah-patriotism of the regime: Putinism has nothing else to sell other than faded memories of WW II. If the US invasion of Iraq was motivated by the chimera of boundless oil-rents and subservient client-states, the Russian invasion of Crimea is motivated by the chimera of boundless Slavophoria and subservient client-regions.
What the Putinites cannot understand is that the Ukraine is no longer run by gangsters like themselves. I'm 100% certain that when the siloviki look at images of Ukrainian people protesting at Maidan, they can only see foreign intelligence services and CIA agents. They genuinely think that only specially-trained troops could possibly have endured the sniper fire on the Maidan as calmly as they did.
In reality, there were no troops among the demonstrators. They were all just ordinary people (see the casualty list here). The siloviki cannot imagine that in every ordinary human being there is extraordinary potential, and that on the Maidan, ordinary Ukrainians rose up to demand accountability from their government. In short, they cannot imagine people like this (click on the English subtitles for translation).
It will get infinitely worse. I urge any Russian readers of this blog to seriously think about personal survival strategies. The lights are going out in your country and will not be lit again for a generation or more. (There are complex geopolitical reasons for this, can't provide more detail just yet. But I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I didn't give you the warning.)
Still writing the 18th Brumaire article, but here's a hint of what's to come: Putinism was the ideology of state-security siloviks who used gangster techniques to take back Russia's energy-rents from the Yeltsin-era oligarchs. That's fine if you're trying to rebuild your own country, but not OK when you start to attack other countries. In fact, the campaign to annex the Crimea is modeled pixel for pixel on the campaign against the oligarchs: sleazy PR, bald-faced lies, rabid ultranationalism, bribes of local officials. While we won't shed any tears for the oligarchs, the annexation of the Crimea is a dreadful disaster for Russia and Ukraine.
Putinism's inability to diversify the Russian economy away from energy-rents has triggered a deep and permanent economic and political crisis. While it is the richest member of the BRICs in per capita terms, it has the least diversified economy, and is in many ways the most vulnerable to the impending end of the petrocarbon age. Thus the authoritarian hurrah-patriotism of the regime: Putinism has nothing else to sell other than faded memories of WW II. If the US invasion of Iraq was motivated by the chimera of boundless oil-rents and subservient client-states, the Russian invasion of Crimea is motivated by the chimera of boundless Slavophoria and subservient client-regions.
What the Putinites cannot understand is that the Ukraine is no longer run by gangsters like themselves. I'm 100% certain that when the siloviki look at images of Ukrainian people protesting at Maidan, they can only see foreign intelligence services and CIA agents. They genuinely think that only specially-trained troops could possibly have endured the sniper fire on the Maidan as calmly as they did.
In reality, there were no troops among the demonstrators. They were all just ordinary people (see the casualty list here). The siloviki cannot imagine that in every ordinary human being there is extraordinary potential, and that on the Maidan, ordinary Ukrainians rose up to demand accountability from their government. In short, they cannot imagine people like this (click on the English subtitles for translation).
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Blessed Are the Peacemakers
The people of Ukraine have a message of peace for their Russian brothers and sisters.
And a documentary filmmaker talks to Russians at the Maidan protest (English subtitles available).
And a documentary filmmaker talks to Russians at the Maidan protest (English subtitles available).
Sunday, March 9, 2014
The People's Will
Russian imperialists -- there's no other word for them -- have been claiming that the Crimean parliament voted for Russian annexation.
Lies.
Norwegian newspaper Aftenpost did some digging, and found out the real story.
Meanwhile, Putin's thugs shut down most of Crimea's TV stations. They were replaced by Russia's state-owned media, which have been busy whipping up nationalist hatred and ethnic racism. Fortunately, most Crimeans have cellphones and access to the internet, so they won't be easily fooled.
Last but not least, an open letter from a Ukrainian officer to his Russian counterpart.
Lies.
Norwegian newspaper Aftenpost did some digging, and found out the real story.
Meanwhile, Putin's thugs shut down most of Crimea's TV stations. They were replaced by Russia's state-owned media, which have been busy whipping up nationalist hatred and ethnic racism. Fortunately, most Crimeans have cellphones and access to the internet, so they won't be easily fooled.
Last but not least, an open letter from a Ukrainian officer to his Russian counterpart.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
No To War
The voices of the next generation have something to say.
Also, good commentary by Timothy Snyder on Putin's fateful choice.
Also, good commentary by Timothy Snyder on Putin's fateful choice.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Save the Bears!
...the Bears of Kharkov, that is. After their crooked President stole billions of dollars and left Ukraine in a state of dire economic meltdown, Kharkov's wonderful zoo is in dire straits. More on this story from blogger 8 Months on Ukraine. (And check out the story of the Red Partisan Monkeys, who escaped the Nazi occupation of the 1940s. You can't make this stuff up.)
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Emperor Putin
Bankster neoliberalism in the core, gangster neoliberalism in the semi-peripheries:
If you're looking for grim geopolitical humor, Putin gave a press conference where he insisted there are no Russian troops in Crimea. That would be news to this guy (English translation here), as well as the fifteen thousand other Russian Federation soldiers currently occupying the Ukraine. Also, I've got a set of feeds and useful links on the crisis here.
Alas, my essay on Russian hip hop will have to wait, more important to diagnose the crisis. Russia is a key geopolitical node in the contemporary world-system, and the crisis shows that Putinism is beginning its slow but inexorable decline. The title: 18th Brumaire of Emperor Putin.
If you're looking for grim geopolitical humor, Putin gave a press conference where he insisted there are no Russian troops in Crimea. That would be news to this guy (English translation here), as well as the fifteen thousand other Russian Federation soldiers currently occupying the Ukraine. Also, I've got a set of feeds and useful links on the crisis here.
Alas, my essay on Russian hip hop will have to wait, more important to diagnose the crisis. Russia is a key geopolitical node in the contemporary world-system, and the crisis shows that Putinism is beginning its slow but inexorable decline. The title: 18th Brumaire of Emperor Putin.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
When Empires Implode
I must say, the Ukrainian people have shown amazing restraint and civic courage in the face of grotesque provocation. Instead of picking up guns, they have picked up the microphone, the pen, the cellphone and the webcam. Watch this wonderful appeal to Russian parents from Dr. Komarovsky, a pediatrician well-known to the Russian-speaking world, debunking Russia's state-media lies about Ukraine's change of government.
In other news, two leading institutions of our time have taken near-fatal hits in terms of credibility and trust. The first institution is Russia Today, a.k.a. RT (rt.com), Russia's state-owned media firm which used to deliver energetic, nervy and credible alternative journalism on some of the leading issues of our time. Since RT was a state-owned company, they tended to softpedal criticism of Russia, but they did produce top-notch and professional journalism.
Not anymore. The moment Yanukovych fell from power, RT broadcast the most disgusting lies and shameless prevarications about the Ukraine and the Ukrainian revolution. Democracy supporters were demonized as fascists, nationalists were smeared as Russophobes, and lurid fables were told about riots in the streets, mass killings, and millions of refugees.
It was all lies. There were no killings. Ethnic Russians were not being targeted. There was no wave of mass emigation. If RT was the gleaming facade of Putin's modernization project, then the facade has forever cracked. What was revealed inside is not pretty: imperial xenophobia, and oligarch-funded revanchism disguised as Great Russian militarism.
One of the peculiar features of political credibility is that it takes years and years of slow, laborious effort to acquire -- but it can all go up in smoke in a single day. Right here in the US, Secretary of State Powell's 2003 speech to the UN justifying the criminal and monstrous US invasion of Iraq destroyed the credibility of the White House for a generation. No, you cannot blame Snowden or Assange -- the national security state did itself in, by foolishly spreading obvious lies in the age of the internet.
Now the same thing has happened to RT. Over the next few weeks, we are likely to see an epic exodus from the station, as anyone with a shred of decency heads for the exits. Those who stay will become ever more shrill, intolerant and xenophobic, driving away an audience accustomed to professional journalism, and not siloviki PR stunts. In the end, RT will end up as the Slavophile version of Fox News -- all flash and no substance, and of no particular relevance to the world of journalism.
The second institution which took a fatal hit was the credibility of Vladimir Putin as a reliable, pragmatic statesperson (yes, there was a time when he was a geopolitical realist).
This particular credibility collapse requires a bit more explanation, so more on this tomorrow.
In other news, two leading institutions of our time have taken near-fatal hits in terms of credibility and trust. The first institution is Russia Today, a.k.a. RT (rt.com), Russia's state-owned media firm which used to deliver energetic, nervy and credible alternative journalism on some of the leading issues of our time. Since RT was a state-owned company, they tended to softpedal criticism of Russia, but they did produce top-notch and professional journalism.
Not anymore. The moment Yanukovych fell from power, RT broadcast the most disgusting lies and shameless prevarications about the Ukraine and the Ukrainian revolution. Democracy supporters were demonized as fascists, nationalists were smeared as Russophobes, and lurid fables were told about riots in the streets, mass killings, and millions of refugees.
It was all lies. There were no killings. Ethnic Russians were not being targeted. There was no wave of mass emigation. If RT was the gleaming facade of Putin's modernization project, then the facade has forever cracked. What was revealed inside is not pretty: imperial xenophobia, and oligarch-funded revanchism disguised as Great Russian militarism.
One of the peculiar features of political credibility is that it takes years and years of slow, laborious effort to acquire -- but it can all go up in smoke in a single day. Right here in the US, Secretary of State Powell's 2003 speech to the UN justifying the criminal and monstrous US invasion of Iraq destroyed the credibility of the White House for a generation. No, you cannot blame Snowden or Assange -- the national security state did itself in, by foolishly spreading obvious lies in the age of the internet.
Now the same thing has happened to RT. Over the next few weeks, we are likely to see an epic exodus from the station, as anyone with a shred of decency heads for the exits. Those who stay will become ever more shrill, intolerant and xenophobic, driving away an audience accustomed to professional journalism, and not siloviki PR stunts. In the end, RT will end up as the Slavophile version of Fox News -- all flash and no substance, and of no particular relevance to the world of journalism.
The second institution which took a fatal hit was the credibility of Vladimir Putin as a reliable, pragmatic statesperson (yes, there was a time when he was a geopolitical realist).
This particular credibility collapse requires a bit more explanation, so more on this tomorrow.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Dear Russia: Listen To Your Friends
To all Russian citizens:
Mark Adomanis has long been one of the most sober, thoughtful, and balanced observers of post-1998 Russia. He has always shown genuine respect for Russia's amazing achievements, as well as deep empathy for its historical tribulations. Most of all, he has long been one of the sharpest critics of the Russophobes and neo-con ideologists of US Empire who have unfairly demonized Putin and contemporary Russia in the past.
Mark Adomanis is a true friend of the Russian people.
If anyone from Russia is reading this blog, you must read Mark's post on why Russia's decision to send troops into Crimea was the worst geopolitical blunder of its modern history.
Commentators on Russia Today sneer that since the US committed the crime of violating Iraq's sovereignty in 2003, it is rankest hypocrisy to argue Russia should not intervene in the Ukraine.
Please understand that the US invasion of Iraq was a colossal disaster for us. It cost the lives of thousands of Iraqis and US citizens, it drained $2 trillion of our national wealth, it earned us the hatred and scorn of the entire world, and it left nothing behind but an endless civil war in what used to be one of the most modern, secular nation-states of the Middle East. My country has never really recovered from the debacle.
Don't make the same mistake we did.
If violence breaks out in the Crimea, the result will be a human, economic and political tragedy which will devastate both Ukraine and Russia.
There is still time to avoid an epic disaster.
Talk to the Ukrainians. Work out a peacekeeping mission in Crimea and help the EU, UN and OSCE send peacekeeping observers elsewhere, to make sure no Ukrainian suffers from any form of ethnic hatred or linguistic discrimination.
Everything Russia has achieved since 1991 is at stake.
There is still time.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Let There Be No More Battlefields
The Ukraine has become the front-line between the uprising against neoliberalism (mostly internal) and the neo-national forces of reaction (some internal, some external) trying to crush this uprising.
First things first: the Ukrainian revolution is not a Fascist putsch. It was -- and is -- a genuine popular uprising against the rule of a horribly corrupt President and his coterie of thieves. As a popular rebellion, it included all sorts of factions -- Leftists, Rightists, centrists, you name it (for the details., see Timothy Snyder's excellent summary of the Ukrainian revolution). But smearing the revolution because a few Far Right folks took part is like smearing the Occupy protests because of the presence of a few homeless squatters.
Ukraine has an acting President, legitimately appointed in accordance with Ukraine's constitution by a functioning and legal Parliament, and a vigorous free press.
Now the Putinariat -- the confederation of nationalist siloviki and raw materials billionaires who run Russia these days -- is striking back, by authorizing the deployment of Russian troops inside Ukraine's national borders and by unleashing a full-scale Murdoch-style campaign of neo-national hysteria and hate-mongering against the Ukraine. In fact, Russia Today's coverage of Ukraine has borrowed heavily from the neocon playbook of lies, spin and distortion used to justify the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The Putinariat is not guided by any lingering neo-Sovietism. Rather, we're dealing with plain old nationalism, as short-sighted and narrow as any other nationalism in any other country in the world.
All Leftists and progressives should understand that the comparative decline of the US Empire does not automatically erase the violence of smaller, non-US empires and imperialisms on our planet (India vis-a-vis its adivasis, China vis-a-vis Tibet, Syria's Alawites vis-a-vis Syria's Sunnis). That's why we need to struggle against the smaller imperialisms as well as against the bigger ones.
Right now, the Putinariat is whipping up a nasty and regressive neo-nationalism against its smaller, weaker neighbor, most likely because the Putinariat is afraid the uprising will spread further. It is an extremely foolish and short-sighted strategy, because the tinder is there for a regional conflagration which will benefit absolutely noone.
Ukraine has seen enough of war and has had enough of political violence.
What needs to happen is dialogue. Ethnic Russians need to talk to their ethnic Ukrainian and Tatar neighbors. Everyone must agree to respect the dignity and rights of all. Russia must move beyond the legacy of its imperial history, remove its troops from Ukrainian soil, and talk to the Ukrainian people and its new government as equals. Ukrainians need to be better than the oligarchic elites who wrecked their economy, and to refrain from petty revenge on Yanukovych's thugs or engaging in any kind of ethnic hatred.
Put the guns away, negotiate in good faith, and work out a plan to allow Ukraine's economy to recover.
If this doesn't happen, the result will be a disaster for the people of Ukraine. But the biggest losers of all, ironic as it sounds, will be the Putinariat. Overt conflict will trigger the very destabilization of their hegemony they most fear. It wouldn't be the first time a neo-imperial elite committed geopolitical suicide, but let's hope it doesn't come to this.
First things first: the Ukrainian revolution is not a Fascist putsch. It was -- and is -- a genuine popular uprising against the rule of a horribly corrupt President and his coterie of thieves. As a popular rebellion, it included all sorts of factions -- Leftists, Rightists, centrists, you name it (for the details., see Timothy Snyder's excellent summary of the Ukrainian revolution). But smearing the revolution because a few Far Right folks took part is like smearing the Occupy protests because of the presence of a few homeless squatters.
Ukraine has an acting President, legitimately appointed in accordance with Ukraine's constitution by a functioning and legal Parliament, and a vigorous free press.
Now the Putinariat -- the confederation of nationalist siloviki and raw materials billionaires who run Russia these days -- is striking back, by authorizing the deployment of Russian troops inside Ukraine's national borders and by unleashing a full-scale Murdoch-style campaign of neo-national hysteria and hate-mongering against the Ukraine. In fact, Russia Today's coverage of Ukraine has borrowed heavily from the neocon playbook of lies, spin and distortion used to justify the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The Putinariat is not guided by any lingering neo-Sovietism. Rather, we're dealing with plain old nationalism, as short-sighted and narrow as any other nationalism in any other country in the world.
All Leftists and progressives should understand that the comparative decline of the US Empire does not automatically erase the violence of smaller, non-US empires and imperialisms on our planet (India vis-a-vis its adivasis, China vis-a-vis Tibet, Syria's Alawites vis-a-vis Syria's Sunnis). That's why we need to struggle against the smaller imperialisms as well as against the bigger ones.
Right now, the Putinariat is whipping up a nasty and regressive neo-nationalism against its smaller, weaker neighbor, most likely because the Putinariat is afraid the uprising will spread further. It is an extremely foolish and short-sighted strategy, because the tinder is there for a regional conflagration which will benefit absolutely noone.
Ukraine has seen enough of war and has had enough of political violence.
What needs to happen is dialogue. Ethnic Russians need to talk to their ethnic Ukrainian and Tatar neighbors. Everyone must agree to respect the dignity and rights of all. Russia must move beyond the legacy of its imperial history, remove its troops from Ukrainian soil, and talk to the Ukrainian people and its new government as equals. Ukrainians need to be better than the oligarchic elites who wrecked their economy, and to refrain from petty revenge on Yanukovych's thugs or engaging in any kind of ethnic hatred.
Put the guns away, negotiate in good faith, and work out a plan to allow Ukraine's economy to recover.
If this doesn't happen, the result will be a disaster for the people of Ukraine. But the biggest losers of all, ironic as it sounds, will be the Putinariat. Overt conflict will trigger the very destabilization of their hegemony they most fear. It wouldn't be the first time a neo-imperial elite committed geopolitical suicide, but let's hope it doesn't come to this.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Ukraine Redux
The post-revolutionary cleanup begins.
Yanukovych and his gang were absolute scum. They stole literally billions of dollars from the people through various asset-stripping front groups. The President-In-Thief built a palace with its own walk-in pirate ship, while the regime's Chief Prosecutor built his own palace.
That wasn't their worst crime. On February 18, 19 and 20, protester after protester was shot down by regime snipers in cold blood. A video compilation is here - warning: things get nightmarish about 12 minutes into this video... you have been warned.
To keep up with the latest, Ukraine's citizen journalists have a site here: http://hromadske.tv/
Yanukovych and his gang were absolute scum. They stole literally billions of dollars from the people through various asset-stripping front groups. The President-In-Thief built a palace with its own walk-in pirate ship, while the regime's Chief Prosecutor built his own palace.
That wasn't their worst crime. On February 18, 19 and 20, protester after protester was shot down by regime snipers in cold blood. A video compilation is here - warning: things get nightmarish about 12 minutes into this video... you have been warned.
To keep up with the latest, Ukraine's citizen journalists have a site here: http://hromadske.tv/
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Another Day, Another Anti-neoliberal Revolution
The revolutions are piling up faster around here than extinct mortgage-backed securities. Ukraine's president was just sent packing, the interim government has forsworn violence, and the nation is preparing fresh elections.
The Ukraine is just the latest in a long line of nations which have erupted since 2011. Citizens everywhere have had it with neoliberalism -- a.k.a. the endless self-enrichment of the 0.1%, and endless misery for everyone else.
However, it's worth noting that the three mainstream media narratives circulating about the Ukrainian uprising are drastically wrong.
The first false story is the boilerplate US neocon drivel about how heroic Ukrainians are overthrowing agents of neo-Soviet tyranny. This is a complete crock. Ukraine has had a flawed but functional democracy since 1991. The Yanukovych government was democratically elected, but became deeply unpopular thanks to its oligarch-friendly economic policies and increasingly thuggish authoritarianism. The people protested, and when the government responded with truncheons, the people decided to cashier the government.
The second false story has been widely propagated by Russia's state-linked media, and spins a lurid tale of how small bands of neo-Nazis are toppling a democratically elected government. This is also a complete crock. The uprising has been overwhelmingly peaceful, overwhelmingly popular, and overwhelmingly nonviolent. The only violence came from police thugs, e.g. this horrifying scene, where the police are gunning down unarmed protesters (this clip shows another incident of police firing live rounds).
Shooting unarmed protesters is unacceptable behavior for any government in the 21st century. After the massacres, the members of the Ukrainian parliament did the right thing, by voting to remove Yanukovych from office. This is entirely legal under Ukraine's Constitution, since they had the required 67% quorum. In fact, about a fifth of the parliamentarians in Yanukovych's own party deserted him and voted for his impeachment, which should give you a sense of how unpopular the government was.
The third false story is the neo-national story of how Ukraine is hopelessly split between an ethnically Ukrainian west and a Russian-speaking east. This is as false as all the others. Ukraine is a highly educated and highly urbanized country, with a centuries-old sense of national identity. Ukrainians simply want a government which delivers the public services they want and paid for, and which doesn't beat, shoot or murder its own citizens.
It's useful to highlight these three false stories, because they reveal the class anxieties of their promulgators. The first false story reveals the powerlessness of the neocons and the drastic decline of the power of the US empire. The demonstrators didn't wave US flags, they waved EU and Ukrainian flags. Clearly, the people of the Ukraine have decided that the EU's goal of democratic compromise and egalitarian reciprocity offers the best model of democratic governance out there today.
The second false story reveals the gradual decline of Putinism (a.k.a. the post-1999 class compromise between extractive-based plutocrats and nationalist-minded siloviki) as an ideology. The sheer hysteria of the Russian mainsteam media news coverage suggests that Russia's elites are alarmed that Russian citizens will start to demand more accountability, transparency and productivity from their state, and start taxing the plutocrats and reigning in elite privileges.
The third false story reveals the decline of the First World or neoliberal culture-industry, which for all its talk of borderlessness and statelessness, has always relied on highly concentrated national markets and powerful state regulators to extract maximum profits. The Ukraine is a paradise of informal media, citizen journalism, and the digital commons, a polite way of saying, its citizens have found ways to outflank neoliberalism's instruments of rule.
This is why the doom-mongers and naysayers about the Ukraine will be proved wrong. The citizens of the Ukraine have shown tremendous collective wisdom, courage and solidarity during the whole crisis. They have already put their digital tools to good use, and removed an ineffective and corrupt government. Now begins the battle to create responsive and accountable forms of governance for all. Digital Ukraine will surprise the world!
Monday, February 17, 2014
Shout Out: Ziferblat
Never heard of the name? Yandex it. Ziferblat (the name means 'clockface' in Russian) is one of the first in what will be a whole slew of digital community spaces. That's right -- no more of your coffee money going to support greedhead CEOs, Wall Street slimelords, or gangster oligarchs. At Ziferblat, the owner is you (news coverage here, here and here). If you're a resident of the UK, or if you've got some spare cash, the London Ziferblat needs your support.
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