Is A Fascist Future Inevitable?

Many of us have been losing hope for years that the slouch toward a Fascist future can be reversed or delayed. The West, as it were, has Fascism baked in in one form or another, and no amount of rebellion or resistance is enough to overcome it. We are on the path of descent and there's no way back.

And it may be true.

With the advent of Trump in the White House -- an existential mistake in my view -- we got a taste of what our Fascist future might look and feel like. Many of his defenders were ostensibly "progressive," but we found that their "progressivism" was limited to opposition to various individuals, personalities, and policies that were advocated, featured or implemented by The Government. There was and is no coherent ideology among these "progressives" except opposition a thing, person, or policy largely for the sake of opposition.

Trump upset a few apple carts, broke a few rice bowls, and introduced constant chaos into The System, and as such he was worthy of support and defense by people who should have known better -- and I believe did. But more important to them was shaking up The System, disrupting routines, and skewering ("pwning") institutional complacency.

Trump's behavior was one thing, but his intent was clearly to rule as an authoritarian, indeed Fascist, dictator, no less so than Nixon, and Bush I & II. They set the standard. Trump was too mentally deficient and chaotic to follow through very well, but he sure tried. And a good deal of what he set out to do is still in place, as are many of the people he put in office.

Our problem -- if we oppose Fascism -- is not so much Trump or his chaos as it is the sponsors who see their advantage in fostering this sort of thing. Their primary advantage is in keeping the masses (to the extent they are acknowledged at all) diverted and entertained. 

In other words, making it all but impossible for there to be an uprising against the corporate-fascist ruling clique, a ruling clique that intends to endure no matter which political party is ostensibly in power. Trump was great at keeping the hoi polloi outraged and entertained. So long as they were, they didn't have time or energy to do anything about their lot in life, and as it happened, in death as the COVID pandemic easily managed to eliminate something over a million "useless eaters" in the United States and God knows how many globally. That pandemic is ongoing, though the death rates have (temporarily?) declined. Other illnesses and wide-spread poverty exacerbate the problems of the masses.

Until recently, I was almost always optimistic about the future and about building a better future mostly via community. The individualism that was so heavily promoted by the libertarian right was in my view a passing phase not likely to outlast the numerous crises that seemed to be accumulating. It was only through community, I believed, that we as a society would be able to get through what was coming.

Well, I was wrong. 

The breaking point was the lawless interference of the Supreme Court in the presidential election of 2000. While I saw it then as a deeply erroneous ruling, almost worse was the acceptance of this monumental error by the Democratic Party and the electeds, including Al Gore who presided in the Senate over his own loss of the presidency. The only ones who objected were the Congressional Black Caucus. And they were promptly silenced -- by Al Gore. 

Something was very wrong at the very top of the governmental structure. It would lead -- inevitably? -- to the catastrophes of September 11, 2001, and the perpetual wars in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. All of a piece.

Yet I thought and believed that the American People, indeed the people of good will throughout the world, would be able to overcome the worst aspects of the ruling clique that included both political parties and seemed to be spreading internationally. 

The War Party seemed to be universal.

After a certain point there was no more Peace party. Code Pink seemed to be the only outspoken party for Peace in the United States and often it seemed its voice was faltering.

The horrors perpetrated by our rulers were atrocious and obvious, yet nothing was done. Obama was seen as the redemptive counterpoint to all that had been going wrong, particularly the economic meltdown of 2008, and yet he turned out to be part of the problem rather than the solution.

The fundamental problem was our reliance on a singular figure -- the President in the case of the United States -- to solve the problems that just kept building up. The President can't do it, and not only that, it's not appropriate to expect him (or her) to.

It takes a community, a community of communities, the society as a whole, to do it, and the society of 2000 and later was not capable. All the energy was going into fragmentation of society rather than cohesion. And it seemed to me that the internet and later social media was part of the problem.

We are now so far down that path, the only way back toward community is the fascist path.

 Yes, fascism is a rightist "community" strengthening ideology. There is nothing equivalent on the left any more. Socialism and communism once played that role, but no longer. 

There are a few leftish religious outfits that could-- maybe-- be the kind of counters to the slouch toward fascism that could slow or halt the current trends, but I don't see any of them becoming strong enough.

My former optimism for the future is pretty much gone.

The Trump experiment was bad, but it wasn't definitive or final. We'll face the elements of fascism again. 

And again and again until it becomes the default social organization for much of the West.

We've been on that path -- whether we want to be or not -- for a long time, and there may be no way back,

Is it inevitable? What is the upshot? I don't have an answer. 

We'll just have to see, won't we?

 

The Oligarch-Fascist-Nazi Axis -- Normalization Phase or "TINA"

 TINA: "There is no alternative."

There is No Alternative from Churning the Earth

It's become explicit once again. So explicit is the resurgence of the Oligarch-Fascist-Nazi Axis that even private sector propaganda organs are no longer trying to hide it. Only state propaganda obscures or denies what is more and more obvious every day. With the recent election in India, practically the whole earth has now fallen under one or another Oligarchic, Fascist, and/or explicitly/implicitly Nazi rule, and governments by and large are fine with it. They encourage it. They instigate regime change in order to install preferred fascist regimes. They insist that there is no alternative. From a political and big ticket economic sense, they're right. There is only one way forward, and it is monstrous and cruel, and there is no succor or relief for those who can't or won't submit.

Watching events unfold, particularly in Ukraine lately, but in more and more places around the world for a decade and longer, is literally sick making.

How did we come to this point? And what do we do about it?

I'm seeing plenty of indications that Oligarchic/Fascist/Nazi rule is orchestrated at the highest levels of government throughout the West, and that essentially all Western governments have been synchronized and coordinated (in the very German sense of the word "Gleichschaltung") to follow a single path from which none deviate or even think of deviating. 

All of these coordinated governments are aligned with one another, but they are by and large governing contrary to the interests of their people. This has been a factor of American governance for many years, and I've made note of the habit of the American governing class to govern contrary to the public interest many times. "Governing contrary" to the public interest is now a feature of governments everywhere in the West. The idea has spread beyond its initial loci. It's like a disease that is unstoppable once the governing classes are infected.

The bulwark against the rule of the Neo- (con, lib, fascist, Nazi)s was thought to be Russia, for reasons I can't understand. Post-Soviet Russia is something of the type-model for what is being instigated and imposed pretty much world-wide.

Public wealth is appropriated by a handful of Oligarchs (or, in many cases, is "voluntarily" handed over after sale by pliant and sometimes eager governments). These Oligarchs then assert their authority and control over governments near and far, governments which must then serve the interests of the Oligarchs while keeping the Rabble in line -- by any means necessary. 

The Rabble lose their political rights as well as what was formerly available to them as "public good." Everything of value is seized by those whose greed is as unbounded as their power. There is nothing the Rabble can do about it. None of the formerly effective tools of "democracy" work for them any more. They keep pushing the "democracy" button nonetheless, in the hopes that perhaps someday in the future it will function once again.

It won't.

Keeping the Rabble in line requires clever psychological ploys which are mostly accomplished through propaganda in the media and indoctrination in the civic sphere -- including schools and workplaces and all the other institutions which are coordinated with the ruling parties. Should there be a breakdown in the psy-ops used against the people, and especially should the people rise against the rule imposed upon them, they are routinely given an ultimatum, and if they don't obey, they are crushed with whatever violence The Powers That Be choose to impose. Often enough, the ultimatum step is skipped, and TPTB go right to violence.

It is particularly true in the way policing operates these days: torture, assassination and summary execution are routine. Mass incarceration is standard. Injustice reigns in the courts. Government turns a blind eye to all the suffering and destruction among those who resist or who have the potential to resist. 

Everyone else is "coordinated" through patriotism, nationalism, race pride and other such means. 

Introducing the notion of perpetual war against shadowy but myriad enemies at home and abroad makes the process of coordinating the non-resistant Rabble to follow the requirements of their rulers that much easier. War reinforces the sense of duty and obedience that many people have quite naturally. There is no alternative to following the orders of those who know better when there is an existential threat to be thwarted, after all.

Those who resist are isolated and ultimately eliminated.

This is all being normalized as we speak. There is no alternative, and even if there were, would the alternative be much different?

Given the current level of propaganda, I'm not at all sure that most Americans are in a position to even begin to sort these things out. We're seeing how difficult or impossible it is for Europeans to do it these days, as the horrors of European austerity regimes cause more and more suffering. The Europeans no longer rise up against it as they once did. Now they are practically mute.

Russians have no greater level of freedom. 

Now that India is being "synchronized" with the rest of the neo-con/lib/fascist/Nazi New World Order, we have only some outposts here and there where something else again might be realized, and those places, one by one, are being integrated into the new global normal. Soon enough, will there any alternative anywhere?

The Oligarchs and the Fascists and the Nazis intend that there won't be.

Ever.

The Real Plan for East and South Ukraine: Depopulation?

AKA "ethnic cleansing."

If the stories coming out of Ukraine after Poroshenko's inauguration are true, that there has been a massive escalation of violence by the so-called Ukrainian military, there can really only be one conclusion: the policy being implemented under the banner of "anti-terrorism" is strictly speaking one of depopulation and ethnic cleansing.

The trouble is, of course, we can't know with any certainty whether the stories are true or not, in part because of the overwhelming level of propaganda in western news media, and partly because there is so little real time coverage of what's going on, whether or not it's propaganda. There is an effective news blackout. But if the stories are true, it's truly monstrous.

Pogroms on a massive scale. Some seven to eight million, and perhaps more to be killed or dispossessed, made refugees, set on the run. The message is clear: refuse the demands and orders of the fascist new world order and pay the price. Be in the way of the ramrod of the fascist new world order and pay the price. The price is death and destruction. There is no appeal. There is no succor.

Depending on how you look at it, Russia will apparently stand and watch, either powerless to intervene or not inclined to do so.

The people themselves have choices: leave or die. Or leave and die.

And every single western government  is just fine with it, actively supports or looks away from the carnage and destruction and dispossession. Russia is practically mute. A rerun of "Creative destruction" on steroids.

The triumph of global fascism/Nazism is now assured.

Who ordered this Future?

Pierre Omidyar's Excellent Indian Adventure

Oh my.

I noted the election of India's Fascist Modi the other day with some passing alarm at the March of Triumph the Fascists seem to be engaged in these days. It seemed awfully convenient in light of events in Ukraine and elsewhere -- note how Ukraine news has all but disappeared? -- and the concerted efforts of neo-con/neo-libs to overthrow every government that isn't aligned with its own Fascistic program of plunder and despair. So the Indian electorate sent the Fascists from Gujarat to New Delhi and a new technocratic, nationalist, and rabidly Hindu-centrist government will be formed, or already has been, to "reform" what's left of India's relatively benign-socialist past.

Little did I know until the intrepid Mark Ames at Pando did some sleuthing that Our Mister Omidyar, "progressive" oligarch that he is, has his hand in the Indian Transformation, just as he did in Ukraine. And where else? one might ask. Of course the Omidyar footprint is at a slight remove from direct implementation, but the closeness of it, through an interlocking matrix is still somewhat stunning.

Ames introduces what happened:

Modi leads India’s ultranationalist BJP party, which won a landslide majority of seats (though only 31% of the votes), meaning Modi will have the luxury of leading India’s first one-party government in 30 years. This is making a lot of people nervous: The last time the BJP party was in power, in 1998, they launched series of nuclear bomb test explosions, sparking a nuclear crisis with Pakistan and fears of all-out nuclear war. And that was when the BJP was led by a “moderate” ultranationalist — and tied down with meddling coalition partners.

Modi is different. Not only will he rule alone, he’s promised to run India the way he ran the western state of Gujarat since 2001, which Booker Prize-winning author Arandhuti Roy described as “the petri dish in which Hindu fascism has been fomenting an elaborate political experiment.” Under Modi’s watch, an orgy of anti-Muslim violence led to up to 2000 killed and 250,000 internally displaced, and a lingering climate of fear, ghettoization, and extrajudicial executions by Gujarat death squads operating under Modi’s watch.

Yes, and? What's the Omidyar connection?

Well, it turns out:

 
Omidyar Network, as Pando readers know, is the philanthropy arm of eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar. Since 2009, Omidyar Network has made more investments in India than in any other country in its portfolio. These investments were largely thanks to Jayant Sinha, a former McKinsey partner and Harvard MBA, who was hired in October 2009 to establish and run Omidyar Network India Advisors.

During Sinha’s tenure, Omidyar Network steered a large portion of its investments into India, so that by 2013, India investments made up 18% of Omidyar Network’s committed funds of well over $600 million, and 36% of the total number of companies in its portfolio.
In February of this year, Sinha stepped down from Omidyar Network in order to advise Modi’s election campaign, and to run for a BJP parliamentary seat of his own. Sinha’s father, Yashwant Sinha, served as finance minister in the last BJP government from 1998 (when his government set off the nukes) through 2002. This year, Sinha’s father gave up his seat in parliament to allow Jayant Sinha to take his place.

Oh, but there is much more. The article explains how the Omidyar Network (which is closely supervised by the Omidyars) has used its influence in India, and how Jayant Sinha, now a member of the Indian Parliament, was -- and no doubt will continue to be -- the Omidyar factotum in India as head of Omidyar Network India Partners, responsible for the distribution of some $300,000,000 in Omidyar grants and disbursements during his three plus years at the helm. Compared to the $1.3 million Omidyar spent in Ukraine through Center UA and New Citizen, and all the unpleasantness that has followed, India was probably a bargain.

Yes, Pierre wants something for his "investment" in "democracy" in India. At the very least, he wants the online marketing sector opened to eBay. At the very least. And how much do we want to bet it will happen sooner rather than later?

Meanwhile, the question arises: why the fascination with Fascists among the oligarchy? I assume -- but I don't know -- that Pierre's family were aligned with the Shah in Tehran before the Revolution and their exile to Paris, later to the US. The Shah was pretty Fascist as I recall, though opposed to the Fascism of the Arabs. For all the hooey over the authoritarianism and nationalism of the Iranian Islamic revolutionaries, however, they don't have the trappings of Fascists, and they don't seem to be operating a Fascist government in Tehran. It's in some ways closer to an ideal of democracy as put forth in days of yore -- not completely populist by any means, but far from a dictatorship. I can easily imagine that Pierre's Fascist proclivities are so internalized, he may not even be aware...

With India's government now in the hands of extreme Hindu nationalists and actual Fascists, supposedly with a strongly anti-Russian/anti-Chinese policy, this will certainly put a great deal of strain on the "emerging Russian-Chinese Axis." I would say the "Axis" -- if used as a pejorative -- actually works in the direction of EU/NATO/USA, but that's another topic.

The problem for the rest of us is that Fascism as a rule does not turn out well...

The New (Fascist) Warlordism

Well, it's not really new, but it seems to be the spreading thing these days. James Petras explains it all in far more detail than I would. Note the focus on the Indian elections last week, elections that apparently have installed a Fascist government in New Delhi intent on... what, exactly? 

How... Interesting...

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There is something of a news blackout from Ukraine on this Day of Elections. The Anna News site, which has been one of the most consistently non-propagandist (although clearly anti-Kiev) during the recent unpleasantness in Ukraine has been summarily deleted by YouTube (owned by Google) -- based on "complaints." There are a few other Ukrainian news sites, but their content and reliability can be questionable.

The MSM seems far more interested in the Memorial Day holiday, the latest VA scandal, and mass murderers. The usual.

¡No pasarán!

Madrid, Dignity March, March 22, 2014, a Million or More Take It To the Streets

Hail! Hail! Ukrainia!

All righty then.

Crimea voted to secede, not unexpectedly, from the wreck of a shell of a nation known as Ukraine and join Russia -- which isn't much better off, but at least they speak the same language. Well, mostly. (Ukrainian strikes me a mutually intelligible language for Russian speakers, but my Russian is too rusty and imperfect to be sure and I've never studied Ukrainian, so I can't say.)

The posturing and hostility in Washington, London, Berlin and Brussels will now reach a fever pitch of OUTRAGE!!!!™ War fever and hysteria will reign. John McCain will thump his little booties. But the hysteria over "aggression" will all be in the capitals of the West; Russia will simply go on about its business, quietly assuring the security of its bases in Crimea, assembling mostly "show" troops near the Russia/Ukraine border -- but avoiding incidents that might inadvertently cause a hot war to break out -- and propping up the Crimean economy.

Oh, yes. I fully expect the Kremlin to do a demonstration project in Crimea, one that will show off their superiority -- or at least the superiority of their Oligarchs compared to the greed and destructiveness of "Ukrainia's" and the West's.

Has anyone seen a picture of Grozny lately? Remember Grozny? The capital of the republic of Chechnya that was almost completely destroyed during the Chechen rebellion in the '90s and early 2000s?

Grozny, declared the Most Destroyed City on Earth by the UN in 2003

It hasn't been completely restored by any means, but these are some of the images of the New Grozny  shown these days:

 Grozny From Above, 2012

Things can change rather dramatically rather quickly it seems... Provided enough money is pumped into the situation.

And as we saw in Sochi, Russia is not averse at all about spending lots of money when it needs or wants to.

The governing system appears to be Fascism, the governing interests appear to be those of Oligarchs. This is true on both sides of the Ukrainian Divide and within Ukraine itself. The struggle in Ukraine merely highlights the higher level interests in conflict. The People of Ukraine, Crimea, Russia or the EU figure hardly at all.

It's about those on top. Not about those below them.

Pfft.

In order to maintain secure bases in Crimea, I have no doubt the Kremlin will spend whatever it takes to make Crimea a showcase of Russian-style civic virtue and beauty.

While the idea of doing things this way may be rooted in Soviet practice, this is not the same thing at all. Instead of the Soviet Kremlin forcing something typically grim and ugly on unwilling or uninterested subject societies and peoples, this is the Modern Kremlin providing something truly welcoming and beautiful -- in exchange for submission to oligarchic authority and compliance with Kremlin will. The tradeoff is straightforward enough, it seems to me, and the rewards seem to be sufficient in the short term, perhaps long term as well.

We shall see.

The West, on the other hand, is offering nothing but pain, suffering, and loss of dignity -- the Greek Model which has been openly touted as the future for the Ukrainian people under EU/US/NATO/IMF diktat. Instead of providing anything to the Ukrainians, they will take more and ever more from this already embeggared and impoverished people, and they will call it "Just" and "Right" and "Proper."

Just as they've done to the Greeks among quite a few others on the Near Periphery.

So. The Games have begun in earnest.

Perhaps the contrasting examples, of a stripped-bare Ukraine under EU/IMF authority and control versus a visibly more prosperous Crimea under Kremlin patronage and authority, will be informative and illuminating to the others contemplating plighting their troth with the EU.

On the other hand, no one is truly free in this game, and there is no democracy allowed. It's Fascism all the way down.

The only question is, which form of Fascism is better.

That's all.

The Red and the Black

 

I was taken aback by the sight of what looked like pseudo-anarcho-syndicalist flags among the protesters in the Maidan in Kiev, because I could not fathom the idea that genuine anarco-syndicalists would align with the crypto-Nazis, fascists and ultra-nationalists who seemed to be the vanguard of the Ukrainian opposition. It didn't compute.

The Red and the Black flag, divided diagonally, has long been used by anarcho-syndicalists internationally; what I saw in the Kiev protests was a red and black flag divided horizontally, though. It was something I had never seen -- as such -- and I couldn't relate it to any rebel or anarchist faction I was aware of.

I was aware that Ukrainian anarchists were not aligned with either the Yanukovych government or the opposition in the Square; in fact, they were appalled and disgusted with both. So the red and black flags I saw among the demonstrators in Kiev did not compute. I didn't know what it was until today (h/t teri49 in comments for cluing me where to look).

Rather than an anarcho-syndicalist flag, the horizontally divided red and black flag seen in Kiev is one of the flags used by an outfit that goes by the acronym of "UNA-UNSO".

Let us explore...

I never learned Russian or the Cyrillic alphabet, but I've studied them informally for years, and every now and then, I can make out enough to read an understand some of it. It's sort of like magic, though, since if I try to read and understand it, I can't. I have to use a kind of averted vision.

Ukrainian is similar to Russian, but of course, not exactly the same. I would say they are mutually intelligible, but I have a more difficult time with Ukrainian because I'm not as familiar with it.

In trying to find out what this horizontally divided red and black flag was about, I came across this:

The white emblem with the sword in the center is an adaptation of the Ukrainian coat of arms.

Another image of the horizontally divided red and black I came across was this:

It includes the emblem seen on the previous image plus the words: "Pravyi Sektor" which roughly translated means: "Right Sector" which, according to the WikiMachine:

Right Sector (Ukrainian: Пра́вий се́ктор, Pravyi Sektor) is a radical Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and opposition group,^[1] described as having far right^[2][3] or neofascist views.^{[1][4][5][6][7][8][9]} According to various reports, the organization has between 2,000 and 3,000 active members in Kiev, 5,000 in Ukraine overall, and is quickly growing.^[10][7] The group first emerged at the end of November 2013 at the Euromaidan protests in Kiev, as an alliance of far-right or extreme-right Ukrainian nationalist groups, as well as the Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defence (UNA-UNSO).^[11][12]

Huh. Who'd a thunk it?

So this flag is actually the "Right Sector" flag, not that of UNA-UNSO, though the two are related and interconnected. Got it. The "Right Sector" is an umbrella for numerous rightist/fascist/nationalist parties in Ukraine, wherea UNA-UNSO is one of those parties.

Yet Engdahl says UNA-UNSO isn't an actual Ukrainian political party at all, it's a front for NATO and Eurozone interests, a "Gladio" operation subverting Ukraine on behalf of... who?

I'm not prepared to get into these weeds at this time (please!), but the indications of foreign influence, subversion, and provocations -- including at least some of the violence -- during the recent Ukrainian uprisings and the overthrow of the Yanukovych regime are getting stronger.

The Nuland-Kagan-Rice-Pyatt axis is part of it; the Omidyar Network involvement in funding "New Citizen" and "Center UA" is part of it. The NED is part of it. The USAID is part of it. The internal rivalries between Ukrainian oligarchs is part of it. The incompetence and corruption of successive Ukrainian governments is part of it. The conflicting interests of Russia and Europe are part of it.

But as for the red and black flags I've been seeing in Kiev, they have nothing to do with anarcho-syndicalism, they are instead the emblems of the "Right Sector" which the WikiMachine describes thus:

Right Sector is now considered the largest far-right group in Ukraine, and patrols Kiev with groups of young men armed with baseball bats or guns.^[24] One member of a patrol told the BBC that National Socialist views are popular in Right Sector, though not all in the group share them. Elaborating, he explained that the ideology entailed "a clean nation, not like under Hitler, but in our own way, a little bit like that."^[24]
Aleksander Muzychko, a Right Sector leader was videotaped physically assaulting a Ukrainian public prosecutor in his office, threatening to pull him to Maidan square with a rope.^[19]
Right Sector has promised to deal with Russian forces in Ukraine, and has called upon Chechen Doku Umarov, considered a terrorist by Russia, to help.^[13] According to historian Per Anders Rudling, the growth of the extreme right in Ukraine should be a concern for Europe, and has been used by Russia to legitimize their intervention in Crimea.^[9]

Whenever you hear somebody claiming that Putin=Hitler (or Stalin), remember this. Remember.

Institutional Failure and the Rise of the Rebel

I've been pondering the situations in Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, Bosnia, and so many other places where neo-Fascist uprisings are underway with the full support, let it be said, of the EU and the US Government and its dozens of "democracy" NGOs, as well as the no doubt abundant collaboration of our amazing and ever-so-patriotic black ops and security apparats. Not to forget our ever-eager propaganda media spreading lies and half-truths in order to shape American opinion in favor of these neo-Fascist led crises.

Why is this happening now, I wonder, and why is it so easy to bamboozle the masses to accept this bullshit as the genuine rise of the People? Why is it so easy for the propaganda media to evade the whole issue of the violence inherent in all of these revolts and pretend they are all "peaceful" and "innocent" and that they are being brutally attacked by corrupt, tyrannical governments? Never mind that these governments were, by and large, elected and are not behaving tyrannically in any relative or rational sense at all.

I saw Zbigniew Brzezinski on Charlie Rose last night night before last [this post has been in the hopper for a while, and will continue being edited...] prattling like the bitter old man he is about the Ukrainian Thing and going off into fantasies of Russia as Putin "wants it to be." His imagination is obsessed with Russia and "containing the Soviet Union," for in Putin he sees a reincarnation of Stalin and  the reassembled and reestablished Soviet Union, something that the Free World must prevent or destroy at all costs. The Ukrainian Thing has nothing to do with Ukraine, in other words. It's all about preventing the rise of the New Stalin and his perfidious reestablishment of the Soviet Union and its Empire of yore.

The man is mad. The man is out of his frigging mind. He's old and he's bitter and his hatred for Russia and the Russian people knows no bounds. He won't rest until the Russian state is no longer even a remnant of its Imperial and Soviet extent. He won't rest until it is gone altogether, shattered into a thousand pieces, in ruins and destitute. He is our Cato the Elder, I guess, screaming out: "Russia delenda est!!!" every chance he gets.

The horrible thing is that our remnant governmental institutions and much of the corporate sector that owns them believes this shit even more fundamentally than Brzezinski himself does. He's almost mild and sane compared to them. This is one reason why we have been inundated with such relentless and bloodthirsty propaganda about the the troubles in Ukraine -- but have heard and read so little about the almost identical uprisings elsewhere.

It is yet another instance of institutional failure on a massive scale and yet another instance of how the vacuum is filled with madness, brutality -- and wherever possible, with rebellion.

The insane fantasy that Russia under Putin is somehow seeking to re-create and re-assemble the Soviet Union, and Putin himself is trying to become The New Stalin has been driving much of American foreign policy in the region for as long as Putin has been on the political scene in Russia. Anyone who's not the drunk but compliant Yeltsin, in other words, is seen as a threat to be contained and/or overthrown, the sooner the better. The Global Hegemon will not be content with anything less than submission, abject, full and willing.

Our government has never gotten beyond its fantasies of the Soviet Union, and many of our institutions are similarly locked in combat with something that truly never was -- the great and powerful monster they think it was and believe it still is.

And that's why Ukraine is being torn apart by the EU and US. Rent as fully asunder as, oh, say Yugoslavia was, or as the Soviet Union itself was under Yeltsin, back in the day. Our failed institutions, locked in the past, are still fighting the subversive and hot wars they dreamed about winning during the Cold War.

This can be nothing but insanity.

As insane as the behavior of these failed institutions is, it doesn't mean that the rebellions themselves entirely lack legitimacy. As I've said in other posts, people under oppression have a right and duty to rise up against their oppressors. That should be a given.

The question is, do these rebels represent the genuinely oppressed? And what, ultimately, do they want?

In Venezuela, the fact that the people rising up are not oppressed is starkly obvious. The rebels are almost entirely composed of los ricos or their wannabes. They are often blonde, well-dressed, well-coiffed, well-housed, and well-educated. They are the upper crust of Venezuelan society, and they want their power back. They resent being ruled by the Lower Orders, people they consider to be "salvajes"  and "animales" -- people only fit to be ruled, not to rule over los caballeros themselves. The very idea of it, ptui!

These class and race divisions giving rise to rebellion in Venezuela are very stark and obvious as they have been throughout the Bolivarian Revolutionary period under Chavez and Maduro, and as they have been throughout Venezuela's history since it was settled by German immigrants under Spanish rule. Of course they want their power back. They believe it is their right. Democracy? Piffle!

The anti-Bolivarian propaganda in this country has been strenuous and relentless since the establishment of the Bolivarian Revolution in the late '90s. When there was a coup against Chavez in 2002, American media, led by the New York Times, exploded with joy and rapture. Unfortunately for the celebrators, the coup only lasted a couple of days, and Chavez regained his presidential palace to continue on the path he'd set -- toward ever more democracy and social justice, something populations in Latin America had long yearned for, yearnings long thwarted by institutions established to prevent the rise of the People. Ever. Institutions that were enabled by the Spanish, by the governments that won their independence from Spain, and not much later by the United States government which took charge of the Hemisphere as its own private backyard empire.

The Bolivarian Revolution reversed the power structure of Venezuela, putting the long oppressed majority in charge and curtailing the power of los ricos to rule over them. A rather mild version of social and economic justice was instituted. The rich were not deprived of their wealth -- at least not entirely -- only their power over the state, power which was reserved to The People as a whole.

The uprisings of the rich against that state of affairs have been ongoing for close to two decades, and they have often turned bloody. The state, under Chavez and Maduro, has been remarkably tolerant of the mischief made by the rebels, essentially declaring an amnesty for the rebels time and again, in an apparent effort to include them in the Revolution. The burden the rebels are attempting to throw off does not appear to be that of genuine oppression, for it is difficult to find any significant effort to oppress the rich in Venezuela or to confiscate their wealth, or to silence their voices, or to interfere significantly with their ways of life. The burden the rich in Venezuela seek to throw off is a psychological one, the burden of their own sense of powerlessness -- though they are not truly powerless in the Bolivarian system at all, not any more so than anyone else is truly powerless.

One of the remarkable features of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela is the widespread use of direct democratic councils through which Venezuelans of all classes are empowered, and by which the country has been able to progress in the interests of all the people, not just a few.

And it is that very empowerment of the whole people as well as the extensive provision of basic housing, healthcare, education, and justice for all that the rebels seek to eliminate and destroy. When they talk about Maduro's "exit" they're talking about overthrowing the entire Bolivarian system and remaking Venezuela into a version of what it used to be, putting the closed sign on the institution of People's democracy and ending such frivolous nonsense as social and economic justice once and for all.
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Now that the Ukrainian uprising has apparently succeeded in driving out Yanukovych and ending his rule (though it's not entirely certain), rebels in Caracas are no doubt encouraged. If they can only turn the military and police away from Maduro's government, they're home free, yes?

How might they do that?

Money talks, as we've been seeing in almost every corner of the globe, every aspect of life.

The rule of money, the failure of institutions, and the rise of rebels are all tied together. This year may well turn into one for the books.

[Events have intervened to cut short this post, though I'm sure it's quite long enough!]