Odessa Massacre -- May 2, 2014

It's an event seared in my memory. On May 2, 2014, I was able to watch several livestreams from Odessa covering what was expected to be "something interesting" in Ukraine following the February Euromaidan coup in Kiev. 

Apparently two competing rallies were planned in the center of the city, one in favor of the Euromaidan coup and one opposed, and both were attracting young hooligans and soccer fans. Or so it seemed. One of the livestreamers at the rallies filmed the preparation of Molotov cocktails and showed some of the participants armed with pipes, bats and at least in one case a pistol. Militia members were part of the crowd. Police momentarily tried to keep the opposing groups apart, and then seemed to melt away, allowing -- encouraging? -- the groups to brawl in the streets.  

Some distance away, at the Trades Union House, a protest encampment had been built on a broad plaza in front of the building. It had been there for some time, occupied mostly by middle age and older Russian speaking opponents of the Kiev regime. At the time, Odessa had a majority Russian speaking population, and many were deeply opposed to what they saw as an American inspired and funded fascist/Nazi takeover of their country. 

This opposition was widespread in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, and it wasn't unknown in Kiev and other parts of the country. Most of the country had long been part of the Tsarist Russian Empire and later of the Soviet Union. Bits and pieces had been added over time, taken from Austria-Hungary and Poland-Lithuania. During WWII, the Ukraine had been overrun and occupied by Nazis, and Ukrainian collaborators especially in the West of the country were commonplace. Ukrainians participated in numerous massacres of Jews, Communists, Gypsies and other undesirables during the Nazi occupation, and notoriously volunteered as concentration camp guards. 

None of this history was mysterious prior to 2014, nor was it controversial in the West. Ukrainian Nazis and Nazi collaborators were a real thing. They survived after the War and became an internal destabilizing force against the restoration of Soviet power over the territory. As such they were apparently supported by covert forces in the West, much as former Nazis had been rehabilitated and been granted favors and asylum in the West including the United States.

Ethnic Russians and Russian speakers had deep roots and had long lived, worked and loved in Ukraine, primarily in what was called Novorossyia, New Russia, the region east of the Dnieper River absorbed by the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine the Great (a German princess for what it is worth who married and later had assassinated the Russian Tsar... but that's another story...)

Russification was often ham-handed and could be brutal under both the Tsars and the Soviets. On the other hand, Ukrainians were included in the Imperial regime and were fundamental to the Soviet regime. Numerous Politburo members and even the Party Chairman Khrushchev were Ukrainians, and the Ukrainian SSR was a member of the United Nations even though it was at the time an integral part of the USSR.

Upon the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine along with many of the former Soviet republics and Eastern European satrapies became independent, left to fend for themselves without central control or support from Moscow -- with interesting results.

Some maintained close ties with Russia; others became fiercely anti-Russia and tied to the West. 

And from appearances and all accounts, the West has been trying to capture Ukraine, or at least cleave it off from Russian influence, since independence. 

It hasn't gone well. The 2014 Euromaidan occupation and protests in Kiev were part of a series of color revolutions that sought the elimination of ethnic Russian political influence and control within the Ukrainian government, and once the Yanukovych regime was overthrown, that objective seemed to be complete. 

Nazi-descendant militias roamed free and some were incorporated into the Ukrainian armed forces with the upshot of the massacres in Odessa and Mariupol and the nearly total ethnic cleansing of Ukraine west of the Dnieper. Russians and Russian speakers were driven out or murdered. The objective was an ethno-state aligned with Nato and the US to act as a bulwark in opposition to Russia.

The point of a Nato cordon of allies along the western Russian border is the eventual dismemberment of the Russian Federation.

It's all very bizarre. 

The massacres were triggers for a civil war that has now become a general war in Ukraine between Russia and the West that has the potential to turn into a nuclear holocaust for no conceivable reason at all. The victims of the Odessa Massacre were among the first to feel the effects of the Nazi madness unleashed in Ukraine and by implication throughout Europe and soon, we can be sure, in North America and elsewhere. 

This truly may be the opening of Ragnarok. Longed for. Inevitable. Twilight of the Gods.

The Ukraine Thing

I think back to what I witnessed via livestream in 2014 in Kiev and Odessa, and I have a hard time finding fault with Vladimir Putin's rage-speech declaring the non-existence of "Ukraine" -- well, at least without the intervention of Lenin and the Soviet Union.

Seeing him as angry as he was during the speech was startling, though, as his implacability has been one of his consistent characteristics. Commentators are having a hard time figuring it out as they've never seen anything quite like it from him before. 

Baiting the USandNato the way he has been seems terribly unwise, and yet there it is, the Bait, and where it leads, who knows. 

What was going on in Kiev and Odessa among other places around Ukraine back in 2014? I wrote considerably and passionately about what I saw going on in those places during and shortly after the Maidan uprising and coup. It was shocking to say the least.

Most of the many videos that I posted then of what was going on, the violence and the murders, the Right Sektor rampages, and so on are gone, but some are still available, and reviewing it now is disturbing. The parallels between some of the aktions of the Right Sektor and the insurrectionists and their fans in the US and elsewhere is remarkable. So, is there a "system" in play?

This is one of the posts from those terrible days. Most of the video links are now dead, but there is plenty of description of what they showed.

Another post from back then

A video summary of the events surrounding the burning of the Odessa Trades Union building on May 2, 2014 with English subtitles. 

There are many, many more. I was horrified and disgusted by what I was witnessing, and I furiously despised the Americans and Europeans who were encouraging it. 

It's a wonder Russia didn't intervene more than it did. On the other hand, it seemed that Putin wanted the whole world to see what these Ukrainian fascist thugs were doing. When they show you who they are, believe them.

The current anti-Russian propaganda mirrors what was going on then. Let's hope the outcome isn't as dire.

Is It Getting Real Yet?

I've been pondering the Grenfell Tower fire in London as possible arson, or a deliberate "let 'em burn" incident.  Once I saw that many/most of the residents and victims were of the Muslim persuasion, I couldn't shake the idea that somehow the fire was revenge for the Manchester incident and the London Bridge incident.

I've seen Teresa May on the teevee stumbling and bumbling through her talking points, points which she repeats by rote no matter what the question is. That says to me she knows something she dare not state. She's too frightened to state it.

Or something.

The Grenfell Tower fire was awful but very evocative too. It reminded me of the World Trade Center fires after the planes hit in 2001; it reminded me, too, of the Odessa Trades Union House massacre in 2014.  Both were deliberate -- and opportunistic.

They were meant to inspire fear and terror, which they did. But they took advantage of weaknesses and unknowns to full effect as well. Did the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks know that the World Trade Center buildings would collapse causing far more damage, death and destruction than if only parts of the buildings had burned but the rest had remained standing? I doubt it. But they knew how to take full advantage of the situation.

The cause of the fire at the Union House in Odessa is pretty well understood; the mob outside was using Molotov cocktails which started a number of small fires inside and outside the building. It is said that those holed up inside also had access to and used Molotov cocktails against the mob outside.

Somehow, it's not exactly clear how, one or more cans or barrels of gasoline or other petroleum in the lobby of the building exploded sending fire up the stairwell, incinerating dozens of people.

The effect of the fire was to shut down the Odessa resistance to the Nazi coup in Kiev. Worked like a charm by taking advantage of fortuitous circumstances. I doubt the mob outside the Trades Union House in Odessa had any idea they would be able to spark such a level of death and destruction inside. But once they did, they made the most of it.

And so it goes.

Which is why I wonder about the Grenfell Tower fire in London. There had been a number of attacks, after all, against soft targets in London and Manchester, leading to several dozen deaths and injuries. These attacks were said to be the work of "ISIS" or whatever the most current iteration of Islamic Terror is. While the death toll and destruction was quite low comparatively speaking, and in each case the perpetrators were dispatched (either self-dispatched or shot by police) the incidents inspired an enormous level of shuddering terror in the British public -- which I assume they were intended to do.

It has become the custom to take revenge after a terrorist attack against targets in the West. But in the case of the recent British attacks, there was no one to take revenge against.

The pent up rage could easily lead to something like the Grenfell Tower fire or to what appears to have been an attack by van on Muslims worshiping in North London last night.

Tit for tat, don't you know?

Of course I don't know that's what's going on, but that's what it feels like.

There have been any number of relatively small scale attacks on Muslims in this country. Some of it is just silly, like the recent March Against Sharia. But some of it is deadly, too -- such as the apparent murder of a Muslim girl in Virginia.

Trump and his minions opened the Pandora's Box of violence against the Designated Others (including Muslims) during the campaign last year, and we are witness to or victims of the consequences. Random acts of violence which had been routine are becoming focused on certain targets.

Nothing quite like that had been common in Britain, though the Brexit campaign had opened a Pandora's Box of violence against the Other there as well. Thus, something like the attacks we've seen -- tit for tat in a way -- was almost inevitable, and so was something like the Grenfell Tower fire (even if it wasn't deliberate.)

This sequence of violence is far from over. I see no desire among Our Rulers to end it in any case. What they want, of course, is protection for themselves. The rest of us, as far as they're concerned, can disappear tomorrow and they wouldn't care.

Is it getting real yet?

More to come, no doubt.

First Division Ukraine 1 -- Odessa Massacre Investigative Report

First part is an examination of the Odessa riots on May 2 and the attack on the Trade Union building which caused the death of so many people. Some of the video clips are ones I've never seen before -- and they are chilling. Yuri Galshenko was reporting live for Vremya Odessa during the Massacre and he is extensively interviewed and his reporting is featured in this segment. I don't understand the language, so I don't know what he is saying, but overall, it appears from the visuals that the segment is more balanced and truthful than many of the reports that have come out of Ukraine.

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This is a link to some raw video compilations from the May 2 Massacre, some of which I saw as it was internet streamed live that night.