The Great Eurasian War Begins

Hundreds of soldiers have just died in and around Debaltsevo, a sleepy village in the Donbass of 2013. Most of them were Russians, sacrificed for a predatory Russo-imperialism which is now going to expand its colonial intervention into a full-scale war of continental conquest on all former Soviet territories. A much smaller number were Ukrainians, who were simply defending their homeland.

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 It's genuinely painful to write these words, but all the evidence suggests this is just the beginning of a bloody and terrible imperial war by Russo-imperialism to reconstitute its lost empire, a war which will consume hundreds of thousands of lives. Unlike the US invasion of Iraq, which primarily damaged Iraq and only secondarily damaged the US economy (though the war's $3 trillion in costs is nothing to sneeze at), the consequences of this war will be most catastrophic for Russia itself.

However, there are two other casualties lying on the cold, snowy ground worth recording.

The first casualty is the EU's foreign policy. This foreign policy consists, in a nutshell, of the EU's commercial elites agreeing to overlook the thuggishness and criminality of the energy-rent kleptocracies of northern Africa and Eurasia, in exchange for the latters' adherence to neoliberal economic orthodoxy. The EU has consistently put its profits above the people of Eurasia, just as it has put its banksters above the people of Europe.

Well, the EU's neoliberal foreign policy has now officially expired. The reeking stench of its corpse needs to be buried, along with any illusions about the aggressive Eurasian fascisms -- the list ranges from the Daesh to Putinism -- Euroliberalism's avarice and cupidity helped spawn, in much the same way the avarice and stupidity of of early 20th century British and French imperialism (in particular, the genius move of pursuing austerity during a Depression) facilitated the various fascist regimes of Central Europe and Japan.

But that's just the first casualty. The second and more painful casualty, and one that needs to be buried not with contempt and loathing, but with reverence and dignity, is what might be called the beautiful myth of the Maidan. This is the notion that the People -- an amorphous group of individuals, with no other affiliation or identity -- can come together to create forms of solidarity which transcend economics and politics. This was also the central fiction of the Arab Spring mobilizations, every one of which showcased the self-expression of the People in new and creative ways. The People did indeed speak, and openly expressed their wish for political, economic and cultural democracy. But building that democracy means the hard work of constructing the commons. That requires energy, persistence, fortitude, and above all, the tools of critical historical and cultural thinking. The end of illusions is the beginning of the struggle for genuine freedom.

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As for the military side of Debaltsevo, it should be noted that Ukraine has been mobilizing for six months, and had sufficient time and resources to defend its lines against not more than 5,000 attacking soldiers. There was no military defeat per se of Ukraine's forces, there was a political decision to accept Putinism's latest land-grab as the price of Minsk 2.

Alas, Minsk 2 will not bring peace, any more than Minsk 1 did. As usual, Putinism is already drawing all the wrong lessons from its costly victory (over the past month and a half, Russian units took six to eight times as many casualties as Ukraine, and Ukraine's infantry units fought well, despite the abysmally incompetent leadership of its top commanders, 99% of who need to be immediately pensioned off). But that's not the deeper problem. The deeper problem is that the neoliberal swine leading the European Union to economic and political disaster are not serious about helping Ukraine. Putin is not terribly bright, but he and Russia's ruling elites are entirely serious about reinstituting the Russian empire (foreign conquests = more resources for them to steal).

From an ideological standpoint, the war will continue because Putinism cannot comprehend that 43 million Ukrainians exist and do not want to be Russian citizens. Whenever Ukraine does anything Putinism doesn't like -- which is practically everything it does nowadays -- the war will begin anew.  There will be constant attacks, constant provocations, constant bloodshed. The Donbass will be slowly blasted into rubble, village by village, town by town. The only thing which would change this calculus is significant EU military assistance, which would raise the cost of Putinism's invasion to the point that cold peace becomes preferable to hot war. Barring such assistance, the killing and the slow annexation of Ukrainian territory will go on.

The people of Ukraine will now begin to realize they've been sold out like cattle, all because the banksters plunging Europe into ruination care more about charging the Russian plutocrats service fees for the hundreds of billions the latter launders every year than about safeguarding human life. This realization will trigger the wrath of ordinary Ukrainians, but it will also trigger an opportunity: the opportunity for a different Europe.

I know many Ukrainians will disagree with me here, but I don't buy the argument that the defeat should be blamed on President Poroshenko. All the evidence suggests Poroshenko is a genuine patriot and doing all he can to win victory. It is true that he did make one mistake, but it is a mistake millions of other Ukrainians made: he genuinely believed that the European Union was a transnational democracy willing to support other democracies, rather than the corrupt club of Eurorentiers, banksters, corporate lobbyists, and sado-monetarists it currently is.

That other, different Europe still needs to be constructed, through direct, people-to-people solidarity, through contact and dialogue, and through the complete and total rejection of neoliberal austerity. The struggle of the people of Greece against Euroliberalism is also the struggle of the people of Ukraine against Russo-imperialism and Ukraine's indigenous oligarchy, and the struggle of the people of Egypt against its military-tinged kleptocracy is also the struggle of the people of Germany against eurozone austerity.

Either we have a post-neoliberal Europe, united and at peace -- or a neofascist Europe in bloody pieces.

There is no third way.

Time to choose.

The Eurasian Revolutions: Daesh On the Run, Putinism Has Its First Military Defeat

The Kurds have been fighting like hell, freeing Kobane from the execrable Daesh and retaking about 160 Kurdish villages across northern Syria. Meanwhile the Assadists are on the ropes in Deraa province, as the FSA closes the vice-grip on Assad's ever-shrinking pool of Alawites and Shiites.

In other news, Putinism suffered its very first military defeat. For the past month, about 10,000 Russian soldiers without official insignia -- but armed with hundreds of official Russian tanks, APCs, artillery pieces and infinite amounts of ammunition -- assaulted Ukraine's ceasefire lines in Donbas.  These were the same ceasefire lines Russia had agreed to in the September 2014 Minsk agreement, and no, Ukraine didn't violate the ceasefire first. The Putinists really do believe in their own lunatic propaganda, and figured two divisions of soldiers could drive the Ukes (this is the racist term they use for Ukrainians, never mind the fact that Ukraine's Slavic culture is more Russian than petroleum-drunk-Russia itself these days) all the way to Kiev.

They got nowhere. The Ukrainians were ready, and counterattacked efficiently. Hundreds of Russian vehicles were destroyed, and at least a thousand Russian soldiers were killed and a couple thousand were wounded. Ukraine's losses were dozens of vehicles, three hundred dead and a thousand wounded. (This is data from the professional military analysts who have proved, over the course of the past year, that they genuinely know what they're talking about).

This is an astonishingly good performance for a Ukrainian army which did not exist a year ago. Since August 2014, Ukraine has been fighting smart, by avoiding the use of mass infantry against armored units, employing its own tank forces, using its own low-cost drones, and using its extremely capable artillery wisely.

Ukraine was so confident, it sent its Azov unit to recapture some villages in the south of the occupied region. These villages were on the Ukrainian side of the original ceasefire line, and were illegally occupied by Russian forces. The villages were quickly freed with almost no Ukrainian casualties, while the Russian occupiers got clobbered.

Now another ceasefire has been signed and seems to be holding, for the moment. The frontlines have not significantly changed since the first ceasefire, which means Putinism's offensive was completely and utterly futile.

Why did Putinism throw so many lives away? What on earth were they thinking? It's actually quite simple. Putinism is running out of oil money, time, and legitimacy. Their only hope was a series of quick, fast and cheap military victories -- a series of shocks to paper over the lack of awe. Ukraine, on the other hand, needs time -- time to fully reequip and retrain its army, which will be fully mobilized by this summer, time to resupply that army with effective military vehicles (the arms factories are working overtime), and time to crack down on the corruption strangling Ukraine's economy.

Putin himself revealed the truth, by commenting that Ukraine was being supported by a "NATO legion" in Donbass. No such legion exists, of course, but the lie reveals something true: Putin is completely unable to comprehend the strength of a free army of free citizens, fighting for their homeland.

I am extremely impressed by the ordinary Ukrainian soldiers who stepped up their game, and stopped Putinism's final desperate throw of the military dice cold. The officer corps still needs improvement, though to be fair they have to work with Soviet-era equipment and inferior logistics, and many of the new volunteer officers performed well. Ukraine's logistics and medical services have also drastically improved, with their helicopters now serving as true medevacs, significantly reducing the death count. 

In the long term, Putinism has hopelessly screwed itself. The war remains deeply unpopular with ordinary Russians, who do NOT want to die for Putin's crazed and idiotic Novorossiya. Putinism could not even dent the frontlines of a partly-mobilized Ukraine with 30,000 of Russia's best-trained soldiers, and Russia has only 70,000 additional such trained soldiers in its entire arsenal. (Russian conscripts can't be used. They would desert en masse, 1917-style.)

Nor can Russia easily use its only ace card, namely its air force -- the EU has finally had it with Putinism's antics, and has made it clear that an open Russian invasion will trigger a devastating trade embargo, sanctions, military assistance, and an immediate US-EU no-fly zone.

Game over, Putin.

Two Videos

What all human beings must fight for: heroic pilot Nadiya Savchenko (make sure subtitles are on), a Ukrainian soldier kidnapped inside Ukraine and then jailed in Russia on bogus charges by sleazoid mass-murdering Kremlin gangsters, speaks the truth.

What all human beings must fight against: Putinism's latest excrescence (make sure subtitles are on). This little gem is entirely typical of prime-time Russian television these days, and accurately expresses what Putinism truly is: the open war of the plutocrats on 7.2 billion human beings.

Year of the Witcher: We Weren't Kidding

My photoshop/Gimp skills are nonexistent, so if there's someone out there who can do a better version, by all means do so. But here's my take on Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's new Minister of Economics:

Eating Well In the Year of the Witcher

Amidst their epic quest to defeat the minions of Neoliberalism, two of our fearless-but-far-from-solvent adventurers, Chimpu (a recent graduate of primate studies at the Miami Zoo) and Babykuma (fourteenth second cousin of Monokuma), took the time to decorate a melon with ancient magical glyphs of stunning power:

After dispatching the melon, it was on to partake of this luscious waterfowl, baked to holiday perfection:

Onwards to yum!

From Neoliberal Despair to Transnational Hope

After five long years of torment in the Hades of neoliberalism, the long-suffering people of Greece have gone Kratos on the Greek oligarchy. On Sunday, Syriza won a smashing election victory, forever transforming the field of political possibility.

Plutocracy, austerity and the Minotaurism of the billionaires lost. Democracy, solidarity and the 510 million people of Europe won.

I've never mentioned this in public before, because I didn't want to jinx anything, but now I can tell y'all that since February 2014 I've been deeply worried about the fallout of Minotaurism (the EU's neoliberal austerity policies) on the countries of northern Africa and Eurasia. Both regions are in a massive economic crisis, due to their dependence on an obsolete energy-rent model of accumulation, and another year of EU austerity might well have sparked a regional regression into outright fascism. The canary in the mine was the speed with which Putinism degenerated from the ideology of petro-neoliberalism into a lunatic regional imperialism which is killing thousands of people. Now just imagine the carnage if ten other countries across Eurasia all went mini-Huylo, all at once. It's a prospect too horrible to contemplate.

To make a long story short, Syriza's victory gives the antineoliberal social movements of northern African and Eurasia the crucial economic and political breathing-space they need to combat their own indigenous revanchisms and neo-imperialisms. If there's one thing to be learned from history, it's that the biggest of social outcomes can flow from the tiniest of political margins. The people of Greece have given the social movements of the EU, Eurasia and Africa that additional margin.

The Year of the Witcher: January

The first twenty days of this epic year are already epic.

Syriza is rocking the Eurozone.

On January 11, the EU had some of the biggest citizen demonstrations in its history.

Ukrodemocracy continues to thrash Putinism.

Kurdistan is crushing the Daesh.

Even Obama has noticed the trend, with a spate of leaks indicating that his 2015 State of the Union address will call for taxing the 0.1% and spending on us hard-working middle-class citizens.

You. Ain't. Seen. Nothing. Yet.