No To War

The voices of the next generation have something to say.

Also, good commentary by Timothy Snyder on Putin's fateful choice.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/