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.

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...

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.