America, we have a problem. A growing problem of rising white rightist reactionaries. The so-called "Left" is in such disarray in this country that there is no effective counter to the organized ideological racist reactionary pressure of the white right/Nazis.
We've seen this before.
The problem is thatwhat passes for a "Left" wants to argue, sometimes even rationally argue, with these violent assholes, when their interests are not at all rational but are deeply seated emotional appeals. There is no effective rational counter to it.
Let me repeat that: There is no effective rational counter to it.
This is why so much of Europe and much of the rest of the world fell under the fascist/Nazi spell in the interwar period of the 20th Century. It was simply easier and more emotionally satisfying to go along with it than to fight it. Besides, fascists and Nazis generally protected corporate interests (so long as the corporations went along with the program) as opposed to what the dreaded Communists were doing.
So. Here we are again.
Even our neo-liberal overlords have no counter to the rise of the right. Some, of course, embrace them. What is better for effective looting and control of the masses than the endless theatrical spectacles the rightists engage in and scapegoating minorities for the losses the white underclasses inevitably endure? Works like a charm, and it works almost every time.
Until it doesn't.
And then it's all hell all the time.
I say stop it now, but the ruling class cannot and will not. They will accommodate themselves to it, just as we've seen increasing mainstream accommodation to Trump in the last six months. "As long as he doesn't go too far, what's to worry, right?"
Nothin' a-tall.
The mess will continue. Even if we get a respite for a while, once this Pandora's Box is opened, it's a bitch to close again.
Strap in or secure your bunker. This won't end soon, and it won't end well.
Showing posts with label neo-Nazi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neo-Nazi. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
Saturday, August 12, 2017
Butthurt Wypipo UPDATED
White nationalist alt-right torchlit march going through UVA grounds: "you will not replace us" pic.twitter.com/QS8ebI9XOW— Tim Dodson (@Tim_Dodson) August 12, 2017
"YOU. WILL NOT. REPLACE US!!!!!"
Some wag posted on the Twitter Machine: "Jews will not replace us!"
Well, isn't that special.
They are, these butthurt Wypipo, marching in their torchlight multitudes, whining about their loss of privilege-- even though they haven't lost a damn thing -- and complaining about the removal of yet another Confederate hero's statue from the public square.
"YOU WILL NOT REPLACE US!!!"
Yes, well. We'll see about that, won't we?
A great deal is being made about the various torchlight parades by the butthurt Wypipo called the alt-Right -- Steve Bannon's bros, Stephen Miller's compaes, the "Base" as it were-- primarily it seems to me to whip up fears of a Rising by US whites against the brown and black hordes of "Mud People" trying to submerge them in immigrant tides, yadda yadda. And it's all a load of codswallop.
All of it.
And so they march and try to cause a ruckus at the University of Virginia over the impending removal of the equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee (genuflect). Oh well. Put it in museum, eh? Like the statues of Lenin.
It's interesting to me that these butthurt Wypipo have chosen to take their stand in the protected safe spaces of universities and colleges. How clever of them. Assured of lots of coverage. And assured they will be... safe.
Be not afraid of these cowards.
BE NOT AFRAID.
UPDATE:
Of course running down the protesters on a pedestrian mall was quite an escalation of the animosity and mutual anathemas between Antifa and the Nazis.
RebelutionaryZ was there and more or less captured it on his live feed (he was pretty rattled, no wonder, and the camerawork was not stable at crucial moments, but slack must be cut):
[RebZ apparently took down his video of the crash because it was being used without attribution or permission by CNN and others.]
So here's TMZ's video:
http://www.tmz.com/2017/08/13/charlottesville-car-attack-terrorist-white-supremacist-rally/
Nevertheless, BE NOT AFRAID.
STAND UP, FIGHT BACK.
As an antidote: DON'T BE A SUCKER
Monday, July 14, 2014
Summer Slaughter Season
 |
| Map of Europe, c. 1940. The Summer Slaughter Season was under way and wouldn't end for years to come... |
[Note: I found the map above in my collection of maps and atlases a couple of weeks ago. The map is in a Rand-McNally Atlas that was published in 1936, but the interesting thing to me was that the owner of the Atlas had taken a pink colored pencil to it and shaded in the then-current conquests of Nazi Germany. They include Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Norway. Albania had been invaded and occupied by Italy in 1939, and it is included in the conquests. Also indicated as partially absorbed into the Fatherland are Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Finland... We know that the Axis wasn't by any means satisfied... Don't forget Spain and Portugal...]
The sharks are in the water. Have you noticed?
The Summer Slaughter Season is upon us, and the various conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere are in full swing. Bloodlust is catching.
Of course the slaughter in Gaza rivets the attention of many among us -- partly because it is so telegenic, what with the constant exploding shells, the running, screaming Arabs, holding the broken bodies that once were their children, and of course the breathless "terror" of the Israelis dashing to their shelters if by chance one of the Gazan "missiles" gets through the protective Iron Dome. (Actually, according to statistics I've seen, most get through. It's just that they land and explode -- or not -- where they have no effect.)
It's telegenic, too, because of the massive propaganda campaign Israelis undertake when they go to slaughter Arabs, a campaign that has only been matched recently by the coup-regime run by the Freaks in Kiev (h/t Saker) as they go to slaughter in the Donbass and along the Black Sea coast, committing atrocity after atrocity, but none as telegenic recently as the slaughter of Arabs in Gaza.
What became of this Ukrainian slaughter? It's still going on, with sieges under way, villages destroyed, hundreds then thousands of dead, millions made refugees. But the news is practically nil. The businesses that bring us the "news" are almost entirely focused on the slaughter in Gaza, for that's where the real action is.
Word has it that the ethnic cleansing an extermination campaign in Ukraine is perhaps going better than planned -- assuming it was planned, and I'm not sure it was -- partly because "Putin blinked" and refused in the end to send more than token assistance (if that) to his Russian/Russian speaking comrades in the Donbass and southeast. The rebels are on their own.
And so, recognizing that they cannot hold out indefinitely, and there's probably no profit in trying to do so, many residents, targets of the coup-regime run by the Freaks in Kiev, are leaving. By the tens of thousands.
Slaviansk fell to the Kiev coup-regime last week, and reports from there have practically ceased. We don't know how many executions there have been, in other words, but given previous indications, we can rest assured that the wet work is proceeding with all due diligence and speed. The armed rebel faction may have abandoned the city, but their collaborators are everywhere within it, no? And how does a bogus government like the Kiev coup-regime establish its authority over resistant areas and peoples? By killing rebels and their collaborators on a massive scale.
See the coup-regime in Cairo for a not-too-long past example.
The killing goes on in Syria unabated, and now the Syrian slaughter -- they say -- has spread to Iraq with the conquests of the ISIS Caliphate which has abolished the border between Syria and Iraq, and is -- they say -- intent on reestablishing the historic rule of the Caliph from Baghdad where once he held forth.
It's an interesting idea. No, really.
There was a time of relative peace and prosperity throughout Araby. It was much more recent than the Caliphate. It was during Ottoman times. Barely a century ago, within the historical memories of most of those in Arab lands today. Anglo-Euro-Americans have no memories of it, because in their histories, they created the Arab nations out of nothing at all; the Ottoman period barely registers.
The arrangements the Ottomans made among the various Arab peoples (and with the Jews too) seemed to work out fairly well all in all, limiting tribal conflict, resolving disputes, providing a reliable sense of security and safety throughout the region for peoples to do pretty much as they wished.
If that or something like it is what the ISIS Caliphate party is trying to re-establish, who am I to say "no?" Except, from reports, it's not. The Ottomans were progressives compared to the Caliphate. Or so we're told. The Caliphate would be going backwards a thousand years, and it would be terrible for the well-being of the people and the region. No, really.
So we, or rather they, can't have that. Must be crushed. And so the anti-ISIS campaign is supposedly under way to re-take the various cities in Iraq that have fallen...
Deja-vu all over again.
We've done this before, haven't we? Wait, wait. We've been on this road so many times.
Fascism/Nazi-ism back in the day was a means of coordinating/uniting fractious Europe's elites and common herd to oppose the Dreaded Communists of the Soviet Union. A rightist form of populism, if you will, intended to do physical battle with the Soviet Bear, which it did with not a lot to show for it.
The Soviet Union dissolved on its own decades after the disaster of the Fascist/Nazi expansion period (with a nudge or two, to be sure).
But now we're in a political/ideological situation where it seems Our Betters believe that the Fascists and Nazis were too advanced, too progressive. Too organized.
Disruption and chaos are now the operative principles of global elites. Disruption in the Middle East and South Asia has been going on for many years, the idea apparently being to prevent any sort of comprehensive -- or even localized -- organization among the Arabs and to disrupt/dismantle any organization among the non-Arabs (such as Persians, Afghanis, and so forth).
Chaos and disruption serve the interests of the High and Mighty, but they cannot do so permanently. At least not historically. At some point, a new status quo has to settle in, but for some reason that is not allowed to happen in the Middle East and adjacent lands.
The current slaughter in Gaza is part of Israel's ongoing attempts to maintain chaos and disruption in its almost-conquered dependencies of Gaza and the West Bank. To what object is the question. How are Israeli interests served by such tactics?
But we can ask the same questions about Iraq or Syria or Libya or Ukraine or pretty much anywhere chaos and disruption -- and slaughter -- are the current ruling principles. How is anyone's interest served more than temporarily, indeed more than momentarily?
There have been more than a few suggestions that the ISIS advance in Iraq is a false flag engineered by the United States in order to disrupt/overthrow the corrupt regime of al-Maliki who was previously installed by the US. That would be par for the course given the way the Great Game has been played from the bunkers of the West for some time now, but there's no telling whether it's true -- or even relevant if it were true -- at this point.
The indications are that the Ukraine Thing was engineered by the US and EU over a long period, indeed over decades, and came to fruition by "accident" when Yanukovych said "no" to EU/IMF demands that would have caused domestic chaos and disruption in order meet them. Chaos and disruption ensued anyway.
Much the same can be said for Syria, Libya, and anywhere else the neo-imperial project is being implemented.
There is no escape apparently; there is no way to avoid the impositions and social/political/economic destruction that ensues.
Much the same was the case in Europe and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in prelude to the American entry into WWII.
While Americans were content to sit back and watch things spiral out of control in 1940 and '41-- at least until the attack on Pearl Harbor -- today, it appears the US Government, or a faction of it, is leading a global campaign of disruption and chaos.
We have become the enemy we once fought against...
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
The New Barbarians
The new barbarism out of the Kiev coup-regime is something so shocking to the conscience, it's hard to fathom or even to recognize. Of course, I understand that the coup-regime is operating in the interests of its sponsors in the EU, NATO and the US, and its barbarism is not entirely due to their own lack of humanity, but still...
The rampaging of the so-called "Ukrainian Army" and self-proclaimed "National Guard" is barely reported in the West, in part because there are few or no correspondents on the ground who can witness and testify to what is going on, and there are fewer still who can do it in English. I'm finding that by necessity, I'm learning more Russian words and phrases (it seems that even in hyper-nationalist Ukraine, Russian is the lingua franca), but it's still a struggle for me to wade through Russian language text and videos. What's interesting, as a sidelight, is that although I only understand a few spoken words and phrases and can only read Russian with what I call "averted vision" (that is, if I try to read it, I can't, but if I just let it be there and don't try so hard, it's much easier to read) when I can find English versions of what I've seen in Russian, they're very similar to what I thought I was hearing or reading in Russian. How that happens, I don't know, but it's one of many fascinating aspects of this whole nightmare.
A nightmare, it most definitely is. The Odessa Massacre is the central element of this nightmare. It took place far away from the "operations" in the East, and I'm wondering now if it was a deliberate diversion from the military (or whatever passes for the Ukrainian military) efforts to overcome and destroy the so-called "terrorists" or "separatists" or "pro-Russian" elements which have claimed the civic apparatus in many Eastern cities.
During the height of the demonstrations against him, and the numerous seizures of government buildings that took place in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine during the rebellion, Yanukovych never sent troops to re-capture territory or buildings. He negotiated endlessly with the rebels, and ultimately he agreed to most of their demands -- and he was implementing them when he suddenly fled Kiev. His police were almost impossibly restrained in dealing with the protests and the rebels in Kiev and elsewhere. Most of them weren't armed at all, and they suffered grievous losses from injury and death at the hands of the rebels. Some of them were engulfed in the flames of Molotov cocktails, others were beaten by rebels or pelted with cobblestones, others still were shot by members of the rebellion. The few police who were armed rarely used their weapons, and generally only did so in self-defense. An exception might -- or might not -- be during the failed efforts to clear the protest camps from Maidan Square in Kiev. There were many reports of gunfire from the police into the protest encampments, and I certainly heard a lot of popping noises on the livestream. But there were also a lot of fireworks going off, and contingents of the protesters themselves were armed. Who was actually firing amid the fiery chaos that night and how many of the popping noises were actually gunshots is a mystery.
The sniper attack in Kiev was performed by persons unknown. While the Western propagandists insist that Yanukovych set the snipers to work on the crowd, there's no evidence he did, and there are suspicions that the snipers were in the employ of Svoboda. There is evidence they were shooting at the crowd and the police simultaneously.
At any rate, the rebellion itself was relatively barbaric, from first to last, in part because its "security" was provided by a coalition of fascist and Nazi political elements called the Right Sektor. It was brutal. Svoboda may have been trying to mitigate its reputation and moderate its future, but Right Sektor was and is proudly nativist, reactionary, fascist and Nazi, through and through. They brutalized and killed those on their outlist. This was during the rebellion.
The Right Sektor was given prominent "security" responsibility after Yanukovych's government collapsed, and many of its members are said to have joined the so-called National Guard now operating in the East.
Many others are said to have been bused down to Odessa for the fiery festivities on May 2.
This was said during the Odessa riots on May 2, but I didn't see any evidence it was so. It looked to me like the rioting was spontaneous and the product of domestic animosities in Odessa. There had been previous riots there, after all, in which the same or similar elements collided leaving plenty of destruction and injury in their wake. There had also been many more or less peaceful contending demonstrations -- "pro-" and "anti-" Maidan, as they were characterized.
But then questions were raised about just how "spontaneous" all the rioting was. There were more and more indications that the rioting was deliberately incited by police and a shadowy group of "protesters" who seemed to be on both sides, egging each on to ever greater levels of violence, and firing weapons from both sides.
It appeared to me that the "anti-Maidan" side withdrew from the fray -- they were outnumbered -- and retreated... somewhere. The reports of the aftermath are not entirely clear regarding what happened to the "Antimaydanskis" -- they seemed to just melt away.
Meanwhile a contingent of "Pro-Maidan" young people took off at a run to the "Antimaydansky" encampment at the Trade Union building. It is quite a distance from the center of town where the rioting had been under way to the park where the Trade Union building is located. Well over a mile.
Once they arrived, several hundred of them, they attacked the encampment with a vengeance. They demolished it and burned the debris, then set upon the building itself. The Antimaydansky demonstrators, mostly women and older men -- how many, I don't know, there are reports of as few as dozens to as many as hundreds -- had retreated into the building for safety from the mob. The mob threw Molotov cocktails at the building and at least one man in the mob was firing a gun at the building (shown prominently in a number of videos taken at the scene. He, it is said, was also active in Kiev during the demonstrations there, and his name is said to be Micola.)
In fact, a number of people in the mob were recognized as either Right Sektor militants from Kiev or Maidan demonstrators from Kiev or as police commanders from Kiev. It's understandable that some people in Odessa would see the tragic episodes and the Massacre as instigated by Kiev.
Once the encampment was destroyed, a contingent of Right Sektor militants gained access to the interior of the building via a side entrance where a door had somehow been wrenched and twisted off its hinges. There are videos of these armed Right Sektor militants rampaging on the first and second floor well before any fires are ignited in the building.
Other members of the mob stayed outside the building throughout the assault, some of them lobbing Molotov cocktails, others stoning the building, or taunting those inside.
But it seems clear that Right Sektor militants were inside the Trade Union building from almost the first moments the mob arrived -- and maybe even before.
What happened inside is still being pieced together, but I can say that when I first saw videos of the inside of the building broadcast on Vremya Odessa on the night of the Massacre, I didn't believe what I was seeing. The place was wrecked and there were numerous burned and dead bodies shown in a video recording apparently taken moments after the fires were put out. I didn't even think it was the same building. Another live video showed the interior of the building, and it didn't seem so horrifying. The place looked pretty well trashed, to be sure, but not as badly as in the recorded video, and there was only one dead body in the live shots I saw that night, and it didn't look burned.
Later, I would understand that these videos were taken in different locations within the building, and that only parts of the building were burned. The recorded video was taken near the front entrance where an intense blaze burned for about an hour before the fire brigade arrived to put it out, and everything near the front entrance was charred, bodies and all. The live video I'd seen was taken at a side staircase where there had been no fire and very little damage had occurred. The dead body in the live shot was... a mystery.
Live video showed badly injured people in a pile outside the building, some being tended to by medics, but many simply tossed into a heap to bleed and moan. There were live scenes of violence to the injured and scenes of triumphant gloating by the mob, singing and chanting their victory songs.
Police roused the survivors of the massacre and roughly handled them, placing most in police vans (a few wound up in ambulances) where they sat unattended for hours. Eventually, they were transported to the jail where they were held until the next day, when they were released upon strident protest by another "mob" of friends and relations. Others, I'm told, were not so fortunate and are still being detained. Some 250 injuries were reported, more than two dozen serious.
Not one of the attackers has been detained, so I've read.
I was initially leery of reports of Right Sektor militant involvement in the riot and Massacres, but I've seen them in numerous videos, and I saw them live during a march and rally the next day, trying to incite more violence, so I don't doubt it. But it wasn't just Right Sektor. There was another, more shadowy, element involved in the riot and Massacre. No one seems to know who they were or where they came from, but they have been identified by the red armbands they wore. They seemed to be on both sides of the rioters and they were among police as well. They seemed to be the ones instigating the violence -- on both sides.
All against all, I guess.
I've read reports of Right Sektor militants inside the Trade Union building shooting, stabbing and beating to death anyone they came across, or anyone they could lure to their deaths from hiding places. I've seen videos of bodies in hallways and offices, some of them shot, others perished by unknown means, so the stories of Right Sektor thugs combing the building for victims seem valid enough, given the fact that I've also seen videos of Right Sektor militants rampaging inside the building well before fires raged.
There is no reason to doubt the testimony of those survivors who say they saw and heard Right Sektor militants throughout the building during the time it was being attacked from outside, and they heard shots, and the saw their comrades killed.
The survivors are said to number about 100. The dead are said to number anywhere from 40 to over a hundred, and there are reports -- to date unverified -- that many of the dead were dumped in the basement where one presumes they still are.
There is a big question in my mind about the intense blazes inside the building in which a dozen or more people were apparently burned alive. The fires that killed these people had to have happened very suddenly and they had to have been extremely large and intense for them to kill so many people almost instantly.
A Molotov cocktail is incapable of such instant incineration.
Something else caused the fires at the front entrance and the back stairwell where most of the burned bodies were found.
There is scant video evidence so far of how these fires started. There are numerous shots of Molotov cocktails being thrown at the building, and there is video of fires already burning at the front entrance and back stairwell, but so far as I've been able to find, there is no posted video of the start of those fires.
I wonder if the front entrance and the back stairwell are connected?
The fires in each are very similar, and I wonder if they are actually the same fire.
There is video that shows the back stairwell both before and immediately after the fire began there -- but not as the fire started -- and it suggests that there was a sudden and overwhelming flash over of smoke and fire, initially just heavy black smoke, which filled much of the stairwell. Many people apparently jumped for their lives at the instant the smoke and fire began in the back stairwell, for there is heart-wrenching video of a pile of perhaps ten badly injured men on the ground below the stairwell windows immediately after the fire begins. Some of the men are burned, but most seem to be bloodied about the head and face. They landed in a pile of wood debris and broken glass.
Police and bystanders pulled the injured victims away from the burning stairwell, but many people were trapped inside, and it looks like no one who could not or did not get away fast enough survived the fire in the back stairwell or at the front entrance.
The people who died in the fire have been blamed by some of the Kiev propagandists for starting it. They may have, but I've seen no evidence that they did. The claim has been made that the defenders of the Trade Union building were throwing Molotov cocktails at the mob outside, but I've seen no evidence of that, either.
Instead, I've seen abundant video evidence that Molotov cocktails were being thrown at the building, and many started fires inside it.
But those fires mostly burned out fairly quickly. The fires at the main entrance and the back stairwell burned fiercely -- for an hour or maybe more in the case of the front entrance, many minutes at the back stairwell.
Something fueled the fire at the main entrance, something more than gasoline, and something caused a flashover fire at the back stairwell, perhaps the same something that fueled the front entrance fire.
Whatever the case, what happened in Odessa, from the riots in the center of town to the Massacre at the Trade Union building was barbaric in the extreme. It appears to have been instigated in Kiev or through the agency of the coup-regime in Kiev, and it may have been deliberately engineered to distract from faltering military operations in the East, possibly even intended to provoke Russia into a military response.
To the extent it accomplished anything, however, it seems to have hardened the lines of division in Odessa, frightened the residents terribly, angered much of the population, and emboldened the radical elements looking for a fight.
As they say, "This will not end well..."
--------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: This video of the interior of the Odessa Trade Union building posted by 01.ua TV basically confirms some of my suspicions about the fires that raged at the front entrance and rear stair well on May 2. It also made me cry, for the horror of what happened there can't be avoided, and the expressions on the faces of the people gathered for the memorial for the dead are heartbreaking in the extreme.
The front entrance and rear stairwell are directly connected, and apart from the doors and window frames, there is nothing flammable either in the entrance or the stairwell. Construction appears to be stone veneer and plaster on a core of concrete blocks. The only wood or other flammable material was the door and window frames and the heavy doors themselves.
Yet the fire (it was apparently a single fire) burned with extreme intensity and for quite a long time in the entrance lobby and the stairwell, killing numerous people who had no time to flee the flames.
Interestingly, but not all that surprisingly, there is a room directly off the entrance lobby that appears to be separated from it only by a metal grille. That room was full of papers, cardboard boxes and other highly flammable material, none or very little of which appears to have burned. Yet the stone and plaster of the lobby and stairwell show signs of intense heat and even some of the thick window glass of the stairwell appears to be partially melted.
This is where the people were burned alive. Suddenly. It happened when some kind of incendiary material flashed into flame and burned fiercely in this single area for an hour or more.
The stairwell acted as a chimney, lofting smoke and flame up through all five stories in an instant.
What was the cause?
--------------------
BTW, this story of "what happened" is patently false in every way. For those who don't like to open FOX News items, the story quotes Kiev coup-regime "investigators" who assert that the fire started on the upper floors when Molotov cocktails the defenders were making on the roof somehow "fell" and ignited. This did not happen.
The fire in the entrance lobby and rear stair well began there and burned fiercely for over an hour.
The rampaging of the so-called "Ukrainian Army" and self-proclaimed "National Guard" is barely reported in the West, in part because there are few or no correspondents on the ground who can witness and testify to what is going on, and there are fewer still who can do it in English. I'm finding that by necessity, I'm learning more Russian words and phrases (it seems that even in hyper-nationalist Ukraine, Russian is the lingua franca), but it's still a struggle for me to wade through Russian language text and videos. What's interesting, as a sidelight, is that although I only understand a few spoken words and phrases and can only read Russian with what I call "averted vision" (that is, if I try to read it, I can't, but if I just let it be there and don't try so hard, it's much easier to read) when I can find English versions of what I've seen in Russian, they're very similar to what I thought I was hearing or reading in Russian. How that happens, I don't know, but it's one of many fascinating aspects of this whole nightmare.
A nightmare, it most definitely is. The Odessa Massacre is the central element of this nightmare. It took place far away from the "operations" in the East, and I'm wondering now if it was a deliberate diversion from the military (or whatever passes for the Ukrainian military) efforts to overcome and destroy the so-called "terrorists" or "separatists" or "pro-Russian" elements which have claimed the civic apparatus in many Eastern cities.
During the height of the demonstrations against him, and the numerous seizures of government buildings that took place in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine during the rebellion, Yanukovych never sent troops to re-capture territory or buildings. He negotiated endlessly with the rebels, and ultimately he agreed to most of their demands -- and he was implementing them when he suddenly fled Kiev. His police were almost impossibly restrained in dealing with the protests and the rebels in Kiev and elsewhere. Most of them weren't armed at all, and they suffered grievous losses from injury and death at the hands of the rebels. Some of them were engulfed in the flames of Molotov cocktails, others were beaten by rebels or pelted with cobblestones, others still were shot by members of the rebellion. The few police who were armed rarely used their weapons, and generally only did so in self-defense. An exception might -- or might not -- be during the failed efforts to clear the protest camps from Maidan Square in Kiev. There were many reports of gunfire from the police into the protest encampments, and I certainly heard a lot of popping noises on the livestream. But there were also a lot of fireworks going off, and contingents of the protesters themselves were armed. Who was actually firing amid the fiery chaos that night and how many of the popping noises were actually gunshots is a mystery.
The sniper attack in Kiev was performed by persons unknown. While the Western propagandists insist that Yanukovych set the snipers to work on the crowd, there's no evidence he did, and there are suspicions that the snipers were in the employ of Svoboda. There is evidence they were shooting at the crowd and the police simultaneously.
At any rate, the rebellion itself was relatively barbaric, from first to last, in part because its "security" was provided by a coalition of fascist and Nazi political elements called the Right Sektor. It was brutal. Svoboda may have been trying to mitigate its reputation and moderate its future, but Right Sektor was and is proudly nativist, reactionary, fascist and Nazi, through and through. They brutalized and killed those on their outlist. This was during the rebellion.
The Right Sektor was given prominent "security" responsibility after Yanukovych's government collapsed, and many of its members are said to have joined the so-called National Guard now operating in the East.
Many others are said to have been bused down to Odessa for the fiery festivities on May 2.
This was said during the Odessa riots on May 2, but I didn't see any evidence it was so. It looked to me like the rioting was spontaneous and the product of domestic animosities in Odessa. There had been previous riots there, after all, in which the same or similar elements collided leaving plenty of destruction and injury in their wake. There had also been many more or less peaceful contending demonstrations -- "pro-" and "anti-" Maidan, as they were characterized.
But then questions were raised about just how "spontaneous" all the rioting was. There were more and more indications that the rioting was deliberately incited by police and a shadowy group of "protesters" who seemed to be on both sides, egging each on to ever greater levels of violence, and firing weapons from both sides.
It appeared to me that the "anti-Maidan" side withdrew from the fray -- they were outnumbered -- and retreated... somewhere. The reports of the aftermath are not entirely clear regarding what happened to the "Antimaydanskis" -- they seemed to just melt away.
Meanwhile a contingent of "Pro-Maidan" young people took off at a run to the "Antimaydansky" encampment at the Trade Union building. It is quite a distance from the center of town where the rioting had been under way to the park where the Trade Union building is located. Well over a mile.
Once they arrived, several hundred of them, they attacked the encampment with a vengeance. They demolished it and burned the debris, then set upon the building itself. The Antimaydansky demonstrators, mostly women and older men -- how many, I don't know, there are reports of as few as dozens to as many as hundreds -- had retreated into the building for safety from the mob. The mob threw Molotov cocktails at the building and at least one man in the mob was firing a gun at the building (shown prominently in a number of videos taken at the scene. He, it is said, was also active in Kiev during the demonstrations there, and his name is said to be Micola.)
In fact, a number of people in the mob were recognized as either Right Sektor militants from Kiev or Maidan demonstrators from Kiev or as police commanders from Kiev. It's understandable that some people in Odessa would see the tragic episodes and the Massacre as instigated by Kiev.
Once the encampment was destroyed, a contingent of Right Sektor militants gained access to the interior of the building via a side entrance where a door had somehow been wrenched and twisted off its hinges. There are videos of these armed Right Sektor militants rampaging on the first and second floor well before any fires are ignited in the building.
Other members of the mob stayed outside the building throughout the assault, some of them lobbing Molotov cocktails, others stoning the building, or taunting those inside.
But it seems clear that Right Sektor militants were inside the Trade Union building from almost the first moments the mob arrived -- and maybe even before.
What happened inside is still being pieced together, but I can say that when I first saw videos of the inside of the building broadcast on Vremya Odessa on the night of the Massacre, I didn't believe what I was seeing. The place was wrecked and there were numerous burned and dead bodies shown in a video recording apparently taken moments after the fires were put out. I didn't even think it was the same building. Another live video showed the interior of the building, and it didn't seem so horrifying. The place looked pretty well trashed, to be sure, but not as badly as in the recorded video, and there was only one dead body in the live shots I saw that night, and it didn't look burned.
Later, I would understand that these videos were taken in different locations within the building, and that only parts of the building were burned. The recorded video was taken near the front entrance where an intense blaze burned for about an hour before the fire brigade arrived to put it out, and everything near the front entrance was charred, bodies and all. The live video I'd seen was taken at a side staircase where there had been no fire and very little damage had occurred. The dead body in the live shot was... a mystery.
Live video showed badly injured people in a pile outside the building, some being tended to by medics, but many simply tossed into a heap to bleed and moan. There were live scenes of violence to the injured and scenes of triumphant gloating by the mob, singing and chanting their victory songs.
Police roused the survivors of the massacre and roughly handled them, placing most in police vans (a few wound up in ambulances) where they sat unattended for hours. Eventually, they were transported to the jail where they were held until the next day, when they were released upon strident protest by another "mob" of friends and relations. Others, I'm told, were not so fortunate and are still being detained. Some 250 injuries were reported, more than two dozen serious.
Not one of the attackers has been detained, so I've read.
I was initially leery of reports of Right Sektor militant involvement in the riot and Massacres, but I've seen them in numerous videos, and I saw them live during a march and rally the next day, trying to incite more violence, so I don't doubt it. But it wasn't just Right Sektor. There was another, more shadowy, element involved in the riot and Massacre. No one seems to know who they were or where they came from, but they have been identified by the red armbands they wore. They seemed to be on both sides of the rioters and they were among police as well. They seemed to be the ones instigating the violence -- on both sides.
All against all, I guess.
I've read reports of Right Sektor militants inside the Trade Union building shooting, stabbing and beating to death anyone they came across, or anyone they could lure to their deaths from hiding places. I've seen videos of bodies in hallways and offices, some of them shot, others perished by unknown means, so the stories of Right Sektor thugs combing the building for victims seem valid enough, given the fact that I've also seen videos of Right Sektor militants rampaging inside the building well before fires raged.
There is no reason to doubt the testimony of those survivors who say they saw and heard Right Sektor militants throughout the building during the time it was being attacked from outside, and they heard shots, and the saw their comrades killed.
The survivors are said to number about 100. The dead are said to number anywhere from 40 to over a hundred, and there are reports -- to date unverified -- that many of the dead were dumped in the basement where one presumes they still are.
There is a big question in my mind about the intense blazes inside the building in which a dozen or more people were apparently burned alive. The fires that killed these people had to have happened very suddenly and they had to have been extremely large and intense for them to kill so many people almost instantly.
A Molotov cocktail is incapable of such instant incineration.
Something else caused the fires at the front entrance and the back stairwell where most of the burned bodies were found.
There is scant video evidence so far of how these fires started. There are numerous shots of Molotov cocktails being thrown at the building, and there is video of fires already burning at the front entrance and back stairwell, but so far as I've been able to find, there is no posted video of the start of those fires.
I wonder if the front entrance and the back stairwell are connected?
The fires in each are very similar, and I wonder if they are actually the same fire.
There is video that shows the back stairwell both before and immediately after the fire began there -- but not as the fire started -- and it suggests that there was a sudden and overwhelming flash over of smoke and fire, initially just heavy black smoke, which filled much of the stairwell. Many people apparently jumped for their lives at the instant the smoke and fire began in the back stairwell, for there is heart-wrenching video of a pile of perhaps ten badly injured men on the ground below the stairwell windows immediately after the fire begins. Some of the men are burned, but most seem to be bloodied about the head and face. They landed in a pile of wood debris and broken glass.
Police and bystanders pulled the injured victims away from the burning stairwell, but many people were trapped inside, and it looks like no one who could not or did not get away fast enough survived the fire in the back stairwell or at the front entrance.
The people who died in the fire have been blamed by some of the Kiev propagandists for starting it. They may have, but I've seen no evidence that they did. The claim has been made that the defenders of the Trade Union building were throwing Molotov cocktails at the mob outside, but I've seen no evidence of that, either.
Instead, I've seen abundant video evidence that Molotov cocktails were being thrown at the building, and many started fires inside it.
But those fires mostly burned out fairly quickly. The fires at the main entrance and the back stairwell burned fiercely -- for an hour or maybe more in the case of the front entrance, many minutes at the back stairwell.
Something fueled the fire at the main entrance, something more than gasoline, and something caused a flashover fire at the back stairwell, perhaps the same something that fueled the front entrance fire.
Whatever the case, what happened in Odessa, from the riots in the center of town to the Massacre at the Trade Union building was barbaric in the extreme. It appears to have been instigated in Kiev or through the agency of the coup-regime in Kiev, and it may have been deliberately engineered to distract from faltering military operations in the East, possibly even intended to provoke Russia into a military response.
To the extent it accomplished anything, however, it seems to have hardened the lines of division in Odessa, frightened the residents terribly, angered much of the population, and emboldened the radical elements looking for a fight.
As they say, "This will not end well..."
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UPDATE: This video of the interior of the Odessa Trade Union building posted by 01.ua TV basically confirms some of my suspicions about the fires that raged at the front entrance and rear stair well on May 2. It also made me cry, for the horror of what happened there can't be avoided, and the expressions on the faces of the people gathered for the memorial for the dead are heartbreaking in the extreme.
The front entrance and rear stairwell are directly connected, and apart from the doors and window frames, there is nothing flammable either in the entrance or the stairwell. Construction appears to be stone veneer and plaster on a core of concrete blocks. The only wood or other flammable material was the door and window frames and the heavy doors themselves.
Yet the fire (it was apparently a single fire) burned with extreme intensity and for quite a long time in the entrance lobby and the stairwell, killing numerous people who had no time to flee the flames.
Interestingly, but not all that surprisingly, there is a room directly off the entrance lobby that appears to be separated from it only by a metal grille. That room was full of papers, cardboard boxes and other highly flammable material, none or very little of which appears to have burned. Yet the stone and plaster of the lobby and stairwell show signs of intense heat and even some of the thick window glass of the stairwell appears to be partially melted.
This is where the people were burned alive. Suddenly. It happened when some kind of incendiary material flashed into flame and burned fiercely in this single area for an hour or more.
The stairwell acted as a chimney, lofting smoke and flame up through all five stories in an instant.
What was the cause?
--------------------
BTW, this story of "what happened" is patently false in every way. For those who don't like to open FOX News items, the story quotes Kiev coup-regime "investigators" who assert that the fire started on the upper floors when Molotov cocktails the defenders were making on the roof somehow "fell" and ignited. This did not happen.
The fire in the entrance lobby and rear stair well began there and burned fiercely for over an hour.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
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]Whenever you hear somebody claiming that Putin=Hitler (or Stalin), remember this. Remember.
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]
Monday, February 24, 2014
Not All Revolutions Are Worthy of Our Support
 |
| The Maidan in Kiev, Jan 2014, before the explosion |
This sequence of reactionary, rightist, crypto-Fascist uprisings seemed to get going in Cairo last year when tens of thousands, and then reputedly millions, turned out in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in Egypt to denounce and demand the end of the elected Morsi regime. When Morsi refused an ultimatum from the military, the military removed him, by main force, and when Morsi supporters gathered in the squares of Egyptian cities to protest this clear violation of the democratic process, the military mounted snipers on rooftops to shoot into the crowds of protestors -- something that Morsi didn't do in the face of the protests against him and his rule.
When the snipers weren't able to adequately control the protests against the military coup in Egypt-- a "coup" by any other name, since the "world community" (ie: the United States government) refused to call it a coup -- the golpistas sent in the infantry and armored transport (otherwise known as tanks) and massacred hundreds and then thousands of Morsi supporters, massacred as many as it took to kill the protests against the coup, but the protests wouldn't die. Thousands, then tens of thousands of survivors of the massacres were arrested, disappeared, many were tortured, and still the protests would not die.
Friday, February 14, 2014
The American Media Might Be Lying and Propagandizing Against Russia and Putin? How Can It Be???
This is the infamous Naked Protester in Kiev, undergoing mistreatment by Ukrainian police in bitterly cold weather. There are a number of stories circulating about this guy; I don't know if any of them are true. One of them says he used some kind of chemical agent against police during a protest action, another says he doused his clothes in gasoline and was about to set himself on fire when he was apprehended -- which was given as the reason for taking his clothes before transport to detention. All I can say with any certainty is that it appears he has been badly beaten about the head and body as there are many obvious bruises, he appears to be disoriented and terrified, and there is a hole in his neck that looks like something was jabbed into him. How or why he came across these wounds is unknown and apparently unrecorded. I have seen some reports saying he is a well-known skinhead/white-supremacist who has engaged in some of the most provocative actions during the protests in Kiev, and that we should be leery of any propaganda suggesting he's a "good guy" being abused by the police. Just goes to show...
-------------------------------------------
By this point, of course, the Anti-Russia/Anti-Putin propaganda is somewhat muted, as the Games in Sochi have turned out to be pretty much OK. The American Team, though robbed of so many medals that were rightfully theirs, have so far managed to barely outpace the Russian Team's medal score, so there is that, and that's what's important.
But an article in the Nation has apparently re-opened old wounds, partly by pointing out the relentlessness of anti-Russian and anti-Putin propaganda leading up to the Games, and the ridiculousness of the American media propaganda on behalf of the Ukrainian rebels and protesters, many of whom are nothing but street thugs, white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
I haven't followed the Olympics much since the opening spectacle, as there are other things with which to occupy one's time. My own enthusiasm for the Olympic Games has long been curbed by my understanding of the deep corruption, corporatism, and neo-Fascism that has been at its root and core for many a long year.
But the anti-Russia/anti-Putin propaganda in the American media leading up to the Games was simply rank, obvious, and thoroughly disgusting. I have never seen Putin as either hero or saint, far from it, and post-Soviet Russia has been looted, dismembered, rode hard and put away wet, to coin a phrase. Putin, whatever his manifest faults, braked the decline. And that, apparently more than anything else, is what triggered mainstream (corporate) media's united crusade against him and the modestly resurgent Russian Federation. Very modestly resurgent. For some Russians, not all.
Despite his KGB roots, Putin is no Commie. Ha! But anyway...
The issue that gets to me, however, is the Ukrainian Thing, because it is self-evidently a rightist populist movement modeled after the Color Revolutions of the past and the far more recent Occupy Movement, with the clear intent of overthrowing the elected government of (the -- we're no longer supposed to say "the" when referring to the) Ukraine and installing a rightist dictatorship subservient to the IMF and EU Central Bank. And of course, much of the American media -- including a significant portion of the so-called "progressive" media -- has been relentlessly fluffing and propagandizing on behalf of the rebels and against the elected government. "Stalin-Hitler" and all that.
What's going on in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine, what little can be sussed out from the barrage of propaganda from all sides, is disturbing, particularly if it represents a populist trend toward adherence to ever greater levels of rightist ideology and grossly neo-Fascist, neo-Nazi beliefs and practices.
When American media fluffs for rightist populist protesters -- which we're seeing more and more widely around the world -- and routinely denounces or ignores any other kind of protest, we should have a pretty good idea where this is headed: right back to the Good Ol' USofA, where a New Model Occupy may well crop up, funded by the Kochs and other billionaires, to "re-establish American Values" or what have you, leading directly to the imposition of the kind of rightist dictatorship of the corporatariat that we thought we ought to try to avoid, and thought, perhaps, we were avoiding or at least delaying what with all the hoo-hah of anti-Wall Street protest over the last few years...
I digress...
The immediate issue is the heavy-handed and very obvious propaganda by almost all the mainstream popular media, propaganda denouncing Russia and Putin, and propaganda favoring the rebels in (the) Ukraine.
The article in the Nation referenced above is one of the only ones I've seen in more or less well regarded "leftist" publications, or "new" and "alternative" media, to point to the obvious, and to make the case that this is dangerous stuff, and we, the People, should beware.
It's a good reminder.
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