All of Them Terrorists

According to the Freaks in the Kiev Coup-Regime. All of them. Terrorists.


Celebrants at the Victory Day commemoration at Slo/avyansk, May 9, 2014


If anything, this one is even more moving for me than the annual Victory Day parade in Moscow. 

(Via anonymous commenter at Vinyard of the Saker)

Victory Day Parade, Moscow Red Square, May 9, 2014

Full video from RT.com of today's Victory Day Parade in Red Square.

There was a time when this parade, which has taken place annually in Moscow since victory over the Nazis in 1945, was considered nothing but Communist propaganda. That's the way it was presented to school-kids during the height of the Cold War, and that's all I thought it was until much later in my life when I learned just how awful the War had been for the Soviets, how many millions had died in combat and from the effects of the War, and how grateful the survivors were.

None of this was even hinted at during the many years of anti-Communist propaganda which Americans were subjected to every day.

Since I learned of what sacrifices Soviet citizens and soldiers made during the War, which they call The Great Patriotic War, I've seen this parade quite differently. Many of the older people who attend the ceremonies, dripping with their Soviet medals and ribbons, cannot hold back their emotions. Nor should they. What they went through and survived is almost inconceivable to most Americans who have no idea to this day how immense the battles were in Russia and the Soviet Union, and how determined was the Soviet defense.

Every time I see this parade, I empathize so strongly with those who sacrificed so much to ensure the survival of their nation and their progeny.

I doubt there's been anything else approaching it in human history.

ПОЗДРАВЛЯЕМ!!! УРА!!!

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And of course, "Putin is the New Hitler..." Or for the Nazis in Ukraine, he's "The New Stalin." Pfft.

The Problem of Success -- What if the Short Term Goal of Delegitimizing Authority is Achieved?

In an earlier essay I argue that the whole of the Occupy (Wall Street) Movement is a Nonviolent Resistance Campaign -- including its more militant and confrontational outposts like those in the West Coast port cities of Seattle and Oakland -- and that there is no divergence within the Movement from Nonviolent Resistance. Black Bloc is not a Violent Resistance Campaign, (no matter its reputation) nor are "the anarchists" (or anyone else) within the Movement advocating that Occupy engage in Violent Resistance.

I further argue that the militant and confrontational Nonviolent Resistance that has characterized Occupy Oakland has been a stunning success in achieving the short term goal of delegitimizing civic authority.

To highlight just what's happened since the advent of Occupy Oakland, it may be well to look at the following facts:

• Mayor Quan is under threat of recall, two recall petitions having actually been certified, and a recall election is very likely this year -- her authority in the interim has been delegitimized (the pathetic picture of her viewing the overturned model of City Hall in the lobby of said building after the events of J28 was the key metaphor for her complete loss of authority)
  
• Oakland's City Council members have been shown to be bullies and liars in their own right, beholden to their sponsors and owners and not the People; their behavior has been at times appalling, and has delegitimized their authority
  
• The Interim Police Chief has been repeatedly revealed as a liar whose contempt for the city of Oakland and its people is palpable -- his authority is effectively delegitimized
  
• The administration of the City of Oakland has been shown to be both corrupt and incompetent in response to Occupy Oakland -- thus delegitimizing it
  
• Judge Thelton Henderson has threatened to place the Oakland Police Department into Federal receivership because they have not fulfilled their reform obligations under the consent decree issued nine years ago, a threat based in part on events surrounding OPD's violent efforts to suppress Occupy Oakland. This threat, along with the global disrepute brought on the OPD by their violence and brutality toward Occupy Oakland has served to delegitimize their authority.

Delegitimizing authority as thoroughly as it has been delegitimized in Oakland since the advent of Occupy Oakland is almost unprecedented in recent American political history and is a stunning victory in Occupy Oakland's Nonviolent Struggle against the oppression and exploitation of Oakland's people by its elected and appointed leadership.

Certainly nothing so effective has come from the so-called "progressive movement" in the last 40 years.

Victory of this sort is a problem, however.

The question naturally arises: "What do we do now?"

Nonviolent Resistance by Occupy Oakland has gained a spectacular short term victory, but delegitimizing authority opens the door to the unknown and potentially to chaos, as many Revolutionaries throughout time have come to realize, sometimes too late. My sense -- from the outside looking in -- is that Occupy Oakland activists are aware of the problems of victory, but I'm not sure more than a few recognize what they have achieved.

The ongoing internal debate over "nonviolence" vs "violence" in Oakland seems odd to me because there is no Violent Resistance Campaign in Oakland or anywhere else in the Occupy Movement. Violent Resistance has not even been considered, at least not anywhere in the Movement I'm aware of. Just like most Occupy activists, I would immediately suspect anyone who did advocate or try to instigate a Violent Resistance Campaign through Occupy to be a provocateur or worse.

To recapitulate: Black Bloc -- and/or "the anarchists" -- in Oakland (or anywhere in the Occupy Movement) do not constitute a Violent Resistance Campaign, as they do not engage in nor do they advocate armed insurrection or the use of deadly force.

Militant Nonviolent Resistance by Occupy Oakland has achieved first-level victory by delegitimizing civic authority. What is the alternative to the present corrupt and disintegrating authority structure? Do OO activists have an alternative ready to go once the discredited present system is swept away? Or will Oakland's Powers That Be "re-legitimize" their authority before the collapse?

These questions are being worked in Oakland and elsewhere in the Movement right now.

The answers will come, but finding them is a more difficult task. What kind of future and future world do we really want?

Парад Победы

This is really very moving. Most Americans have probably never seen anything quite like it.

The video is of the opening of this year's Annual Victory Parade, May 9, celebrating the Allied victory over the Axis powers in Europe. There are some 20,000 troops from Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union, and from all over Europe and from the United States, too -- the most ever gathered for a Victory Parade they say -- marshaled on Red Square to be reviewed by the Defense Minister and the Colonel General of the Armed Force before marching in parade before the assembled dignitaries arrayed in front of and beside Lenin's Tomb -- which has been decoratively covered by a Russian Federation themed shroud in honor of the day.

A number of things: there seems to be somewhat more Soviet imagery than I recall seeing in previous Victory Day Parades held since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Defense Minister greets the troops: "Товарищи!" "Comrades!" I like it. He and the Colonel General are swanned around the Square in Soviet Era parade cars. While this may seem retro, it's actually good because most of the veterans of the Great Patriotic War on the reviewing stands were Soviet citizens. You cannot have a Victory Parade on Red Square without acknowledging the Soviet Union was the victor and it is the Soviet Union's victory that is being celebrated.

It's interesting how the modern Russian Federation integrates Soviet imagery -- and avoids some of it, too -- in these annual events, and it is interesting to see how it changes over time.

Here's a video of the 1945 Victory Parade, Uncle Joe Stalin officiating. It is quite different, yes, and yet not that much different at all:



For Americans, WWII was all about US fighting the perfidious Nazis and Japs. I'm of the Post War/early Cold War generation, and there was little or no acknowledgement of the Soviet sacrifice and ultimate victory over the Nazis. But they were the ones who took the brunt of the War, losing tens of millions of troops and civilians, seeing almost the entire European portion of the nation destroyed. As bad as the situation was in post War Europe, it was much worse in the Soviet Union. Of course, we learned nothing about this in the 1950s; the Soviets were our blood enemies, and their suffering during and immediately after the War was simply not mentioned. I didn't really learn of it until I was in college.

And then, so much of the anti-Communist propaganda we'd been fed throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s made a kind of inverted, sad sense. And it was then that some of us began to realize that the Soviets were not a threat to the United States, and that their "chiding" -- shall we say -- of America's civil rights and other failures and criticism of American impulses toward Imperialism were actually tonics that helped Americans find ways to improve.

We don't have that Soviet mirror any more, and the current Russian Federation version of it is hardly of the caliber of the former Soviet Union.

I've spoken with some of the survivors of the Great Patriotic War, men and women who came to this country mostly as religious refugees from the Soviet Union. When they think back on what they lived through, what they survived, how they did it, who they fought, they have immense and justifiable pride in what they were able to do against all odds, and when it came to that War, they were without question loyal and patriotic Soviet citizens. Even if later their Republic (most of those I've interviewed were Ukrainians) would rebel.

The shame was that the Better World that was supposed to rise after the Victory began to fall apart almost immediately and for too many, it has become or is becoming a nightmare.

We deserve better.

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My sort of half-assed translation of the Defense Minister's statement to the troops:

"Greetings Comrades!" They respond something like: "Greetings, Comrade Defense Minister!" He then says something like, "Felicitations on the Anniversary (66th? couldn't quite make it out) of Victory in the Great Patriotic War!" Then the troops commence to roar. You don't see that every day.