Horst Wessel Lied

("Horst-Wessel Song")

As always, a little history is in order.

It may be apparent that there is another of those gawd-awful "national conversations" going on about the recent (re-)emergence of Antifa, the active anti-fascists who aren't afraid of mixing thing up and physically fighting the rightists, fascists and neo-Nazis in street brawls that have gotten a bit of attention among the "news" media.

Yes well.

Horst Wessel was a Nazi who wrote the lyrics to a song that became the anthem of the Nazi Party in 1930 and of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. Some say he wrote the music, too, but it's too close to the well-known hymn "How Great Thou Art" for that to be true.

Host Wessel became a Nazi martyr after his murder by a Communist in Berlin in 1930. Joseph Goebbels masterfully parlayed his death to enhance the Nazi Party and denigrate the Communists. They were, after all, arch enemies throughout the interwar and WWII periods.

For some reason, they're arch-enemies again. "Antifa" you see, are today's "Communists." The "Alt-Right" however you want to define it, are today's Nazis (some are literal Nazis, most are cosplayers).

Street brawls between Nazis and their opponents were a feature of the Late Weimar Republic in Germany. The authorities tended not to intervene (not unlike Charlottesville) and let the boys have at one another as they chose. Horst Wessel was one of the brawlers, but he was killed over a personal money matter between him, his girlfriend, and their landlady. Or so it would seem. The truth of the matter is subject to scholarly dispute to this day. Overlay the politics of the day (then and now) and there's no there's no telling what really happened.

It appears that the rightist media in this country is attempting to turn a fellow named Keith Campbell into a Martyr for the Cause (Horst Wessel?) because he was seen being beat up on camera in Berkeley. Antifa did the deed. Video clips I've seen show him running away from several black-clad dudes who catch up to him and start wailing away as he curls up to protect himself. A black man runs to his rescue and stops the beating while a crowd gathers, some threatening, others attempting to stop the violence. Eventually, the crowd disperses and Campbell is led away, shaken but ambulatory.

According to the reports I've seen, Campbell is a well-known white rightist provocateur who sees his mission as "defeating the left" by any means necessary. Yes well, that always turns out well, right?

As a provocateur, of course, he's more than a little interested in provoking his leftist/Communist/Antifa enemies into a fight, and so when it happened on camera in Berkeley, he gained cred and cachet both with the rightist and mainstream media as a poor little white boy being mercilessly beaten by "Antifa thugs."

Thus a narrative was established about the "violent left," versus the "peaceful right."

Of course it's not true, but that's another issue altogether.

As a sidenote, the use of "peaceful" as opposed to "nonviolent" to describe marches and demonstrations is very grating to me. Peaceful implies passive, whereas nonviolent can mean a lot of not very peaceful things at all. But somehow, during the last few years, demonstrations and marches have been categorized as "peaceful" or "violent" depending on whether somebody breaks a window, starts a dumpster fire, wears black or the police use chemical weapons against the demonstrators. It's bizarre. Another issue is the problem of categorizing protesters, counter-protesters, and civilian observers.  And then there are all the infiltrators...

Now that there are brawlers on all sides, it's all a muddle, no?

Anyway, one of the chief efforts of the Overclass during the current time of troubles has been to keep the Left (so-called) "peaceful" by any means necessary -- primarily by invoking Saints Ghandi (sic) and MLK incessantly and often inappropriately.

The fear of an active and muscular left (real or so-called) that fights back is palpable among Our Betters. There is no such fear of a violent right.

In fact, there's tacit and sometimes overt encouragement of it.

The more violence from the right including the Nazis, the better.

Heather Heyer was killed and dozens of "peaceful" demonstrators in Charlottesville were injured by white rightists rallying and going berzerk a few weeks ago. The white right and their allies have killed dozens of people and injured hundreds in the last few years, but it is always, always, always important to keep the Left (what there is of it) "peaceful," passive, and pathetic in the face of the violence both from the white right and the state. Don't forget what happened at Standing Rock and during so many other demonstrations for justice.

And then there's the whole frustrating and largely bogus "free speech" argument that I won't get into for now.

The point, ultimately, is that despite the disgust most Americans have for the white rightists, keeping them on an even or higher plane than the feared Left, and letting them be as unpeaceful as they want to be, while the Left (such as it is) does nothing or less is the received narrative.

So far, Antifa refuses to play.

The Immigration Thing

Yet another summer Shark and Missing White Woman story to distract from what's really going on.

Damn.

And they trot out that little would-be Nazi -- probably drugged up and excited as hell -- to sell the latest scheme to Make America White Again. Here we go.

Now they say there's not a chance in hell this regime proposal will be passed by Congress, not that that matters in the vast eternal scheme. That's not the point of it. The point is to control the conversation about the dreaded incomers, and to force the other side into a defensive (and losing) posture.

Successfully playing to the base while making immigration advocates scramble to defend the incomers on a non-ideological basis. That's been a problem with this immigration thing -- going back many many years -- all along. The reasons why we've had so much immigration over the entire history of the United States and why it's desirable (and for whom)  are never articulated, whereas those who seek to restrict immigration know and can say why (though their arguments might be filled with lies and distortions -- as the little Nazi's arguments clearly were.)

Relying on anecdotes and the Emma Lazarus poem to justify large scale immigration doesn't really work. I don't really know why my ancestors left England, Ireland and Germany when time was, but they did, and they came to the US, made new lives for themselves, and here I am. I wouldn't be here without that. On the other hand, I wouldn't be here without the kindness and forbearance ofthe Native Americans who saved my life, quite literally.

So how should I feel, personally, about immigration?

Personally, I'm relatively neutral about more immigrants coming in. It's neither a good thing nor a bad thing in and of itself. Most of the objections to immigration have to do with who comes and how many and where they wind up. This goes right back to the beginning of Euro-conquest and immigration to North America. The struggle over it is never-ending.

Most of the defense of immigration has to do with a whole bunch of unknown wonders that might accrue. You never know. Right?

I think most Americans have no idea how the current immigration system works or doesn't work. It's a mess by any objective measure, and the regime proposals won't fix that. The problem is that the system isn't set up to handle large numbers of applicants; so millions wait, some of them for many years, while the various steps toward getting a Green Card are undertaken -- or not. It's crazy.

The Emma Lazarus system at Ellis Island was more efficient and comprehensible.

So. What should be done? For the time being, nothing. And that looks like what will happen.

Until immigration advocates get their act together and go on the offense, the notion that anyone can fix what's wrong with the system is silly.

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...

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.

Riding the Ukrainian Tiger

There's been little or no mainstream news coverage of Ukrainian matters for many weeks, as the so-called military operations of the Kiev coup-regime continue in the East and South, supplemented by all kinds of militia and "privat-armi" action, including the phenomena of death squads, so beloved of our own government's adventurism abroad.

So far as I can tell, the mayhem and chaos is confined to the "separatist" regions, but it is bloody and nasty and is meant to terrorize the locals into complying with the demands of the Freaks in Kiev -- whatever they may turn out to be. There is, after all, supposed to be a "national election" tomorrow that is intended to endorse and confirm the Kiev Freak-Regime in power, and to assert one or another of the "Western" oligarchs as President, probably the so-called Chocolate King, Poroshenko.

Someone the West can do business with at any rate.

It must be said that Russia has stayed pretty much out of this mess of growing proportions on its western border. Despite all the propaganda and hysteria about "Putin-Hitler" and "Putin-Stalin" and the nonsense about "reviving the Soviet Union" and all the constant baiting of the Kremlin by Anglo-American and EU interests, Putin and the Kremlin have remained remarkably calm and restrained. They have not intervened on behalf of their Russian-speaking Ukrainian brothers and sisters, in fact they seem to have shunted them away as the death and destruction from Kiev continues unabated.

So far as matters can be puzzled out from afar -- and the lack of "news" from the region is as telling as if there were actual news being reported in the mainstream -- the Kiev coup-regime is as freaky as The Saker makes them out to be. Though curried by Anglo-American and EU imperialists, they are massively incompetent to actually govern -- not that anyone else is on tap who might be better.

Since independence in 1991, Ukraine has been ruled by a succession of incompetents and kleptocrats, leaving little or nothing in their wake. I've been struck by the videos I've seen of various parts of Ukraine, from Kiev eastwards. Practically every building is a legacy of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union. It appears that almost nothing has been built -- at least from Kiev eastwards -- since independence, and programs on the Vremya Odessa channel continuously highlight the deterioration of housing and other buildings from the Imperial and the Soviet eras -- which are almost the only buildings there are in any case.

The place is falling apart, at least those parts that are not being deliberately destroyed by the Freaks in Kiev and their henchmen.

Of course this civic deterioration and lack of infrastructure construction and maintenance activity is widespread throughout the West as well. In Ukraine, it's no surprise that a handful of kleptocrats, styled "oligarchs" hoovered up all of the valuable properties and industries as soon as they were offered by Kiev and that is a major reason why little or nothing is or has been done on behalf of the public interest, and nothing resembling a government of the people has ever taken root in Kiev. It can't so long as everything of value is in the hands of kleptocrats and oligarchs and everyone's deteriorating well-being is dependent upon them rather than on the will of the People themselves.

While the situation in Ukraine is far starker than what we see in the West, they mirror one another. Oligarchic control isn't as complete in the West, but it is getting there, the goal being more like the Ukraine (minus the civil unrest) than not.

It's dreadful.

But that's the world these global oligarchs and kleptocrats want for the rest of us; what they want for themselves is another matter.

The Ukraine is turning into another Yugoslavia or even (God forbid) another Libya, and this has got to put some fear into the minds and hearts (such as they are) of the oligarchs and kleptocrats and their servants. Profits can still be made, of course, if the situation deteriorates completely, as it did in the Former Yugoslavia and Libya, but the amounts extractable -- and on whose behalf -- are seriously diminished under such conditions than they would otherwise be.

Stability may not be a short term objective, however. More wealth can be looted faster under conditions of chaos and warlordism than under any stable regime, so if the short-term objective is to steal as much as possible from the Ukrainian people -- and to destroy what can't be stolen outright -- then maintaining the current conditions are much preferable to having an actual national government in Kiev. Note, for example, how the sham of national governance is maintained in Baghdad  while the wealth of the nation (such as remains after wars and occupations) is pillaged and what can't be taken is destroyed day in and day out...

Having an unstable Ukraine on the borders of Europe and Russia would not seem to be in the interests of either Russia or the EU over the long term, however. What's there now is a tiger that isn't being ridden very well by anyone, not the Freaks in Kiev, not the oligarchs and kleptocrats, not the Kremlin, and not by the sponsors of the coup.

The mess gets worse daily.

The Ukrainian people are being used and abused badly. Their attempts to take matters into their own hands are understandable, but as we've seen so often elsewhere, the people who are actually capable of taking control of the chaos are the rightists, the Fascists and the Nazis, not the socialists/communists and democrats. This is what happened in Europe during the interregnum between the World Wars, and in a sense, it's what's happened throughout the West and East during the Post - Soviet Era.

In other words, power has devolved since the expiration of the failed Soviet experiment into a re-animation and revision of the supposedly destroyed Fascist/Nazi experiments of the post-WWI era. Since the Soviet version of Communism and the Fascist/Nazi version of Capitalism were essentially mirror images of one another, both totalitarian and in competition with one another -- eventually at war with one another for supremacy (or survival as the case may be) -- the absence of the Soviet model together with the resurgence of the Fascist/Nazi model means gross imbalance at the very least. Specious claims that Putin-Russia are the mirror image of the Soviet Union, and thus the mirror image rivals of the West are ludicrous. Putin-Russia are integral aspects of the Western rightist resurgence. Compared to the EU, Russia today is more like Poland in comparison to Germany in 1937 or 39. Poland was just as Fascist as Germany at that time though not quite as dominance-minded. Their governance and economic regimes were practically the same.

So it is with Russia and the EU; they're hardly distinguishable.

Ukraine is a tiger being ridden by the EU and US, but without grace or skill, and Russia seems content to see it falter and even die.

Putin-Russia have the Crimea and that's sufficient unto the needs of the Kremlin.

There can be no sufficiency, though, in the eyes of the West under its current neo-Fascist/Nazi regime. It's either all or nothing.

"All" means the end of rivals like Russia and China. Not their incorporation into the Western Realm, their extinction.

India has just elected a Fascist government, interestingly enough. Perhaps that assures that India doesn't fall into the "rival" camp. I don't know, but could be. Meanwhile, China is declared a rival and indeed cyber-enemy. While name-calling the West and particularly the USofA "mincing rascals" is cute, I'm sure the Chinese know very well what is up and are taking appropriate steps to protect themselves.

Ukraine is not a rival, it's a resource to be exploited, nothing more or less, and what can't be exploited is to be destroyed. Depopulation is already under way -- has been a feature, not a bug, of Ukraine's independence from Soviet/Russian control.

Russia doesn't seem to be interested in participating in either the destruction or the exploitation of Ukraine and seems content to let the locals fight over the debris, and let the EU/US/NATO axis try to make something other than a giant mess of what's left.

And every time I see the claim that the West is "supporting" Nazis and Fascists in Ukraine, I shake my head and think, "No, the West IS Fascist and Nazi." The Anglo-American/EU Imperial Project isn't something "other than" Fascist/Nazi, it IS the Fascist/Nazi project made manifest once again.

Nazi Freaking Cowards

Notice all the unarmed "terrorists" who got shot by the Right Sektor National Guard in Mariupol today?

There Are No Nazis in Ukraine

Well, maybe a few. Here and there...



(Via Michael Whitney at Counterpunch, h/t teri49 in comments... sorry it took me so long to post the h/t)

News From Odessa

To protect and serve

o1.ua  reports that there are two Right Sektor paramilitary "security" brigades occupying

Odessa in preparations for the May 9 Victory Day celebrations tomorrow. Their responsibilities include preventing "separatist manifestations" -- ie: Antimaidansky protests.

Should be worlds of fun.

Further reports are that arrests of Antimaidansky activists continue. The fires at the Trade Union building in Odessa are being blamed entirely on the Antimaidanski-ites, who are purported to have caused the fires either when the gasoline they were using on the roof to prepare the Molotov cocktails with which they were attacking the peaceful Pro-maidansky mob below ignited and "fell" to lower stories, or -- a new supposition -- when something the Antimaidansky activists brought inside the building exploded. This latest idea was presented at a news conference by Andrey Parubiy, the fascist head of the Ukrainian coup-regime's "security" services.

This is all classic Nazi behavior from the fomenting of riots, the massacre of civilians, the arrest of the opposition, to the blaming of the victims. The situation in Odessa is playing out almost exactly as similar situations played out in Nazi Germany and their conquered territories (including Ukraine) back in the day.

It's obvious as sin, and the fact that the entire Western establishment is backing these fascists and Nazis without reservation, is arming and equipping them, is encouraging and cheerleading them, should serve as a warning to every single one of us.

We are no longer "in danger" of falling into a neo-fascist future, we're there. The open support that the EU/NATO and the US are giving these freaks and thugs in Ukraine, while excoriating Russia and Putin for what these freaks and thugs are doing, is as sure a sign as anyone could want that we have arrived at the neo-fascist future, and what is happening to opposition in Ukraine is very possible everywhere the West holds sway. We've had many warnings, but now, they'll just do it.

I have little love for Vladimir Putin -- which is another topic altogether -- but most of his observations about what is and has been going on have been spot on, but most of his response has been surprisingly mild. I've always felt that he and his regime in the Kremlin are part of the pageant of neo-fascist revival, but at times he's been clear that he believes the march of Western fascism and Nazi-ism has to be stopped. Well, yes.

How and when is the question.
------------------------------------------------
This is video of a March 1 "Antimaidansky" rally at square in front of the Odessa Trade Union building. Seven thousand or more are said to have attended. Some of them are dead now and others are being hunted by the "security" forces.



This is a video of the Right Sektor and "Euromaidan" preparations and march to the Odessa Trade Union building site the day after the massacre. I watched it unfold live on Vremya Odessa and reported it at FDL as it was happening. It was chilling.

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..."

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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?
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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.

Don't Forget Latvia!!!

According to Himself, the Yats, Ukrainia signed the EU's political package today in Brussels, marking the next step in the integration of Ukrainia into the warm and welcoming bosom of Europe. Hail! Hail! Ukrainia!

I've long said that this European "Integration" program for Ukraine (and the other Eastern Partnership members, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus) is intended to impose severe austerity measures on the population while stripping the region of resources, something like the EU has done to Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland during the past several years. It is a matter of simple economics, no?

Of course, the peoples of these regions probably have no idea what Europe's intentions are for the simple reason that they have been sold rainbows and unicorns. For decades. That's what all those NGOs I listed and looked into are for. Make them believe their lives will be filled with prosperity and joy, once their country is part of Europe!

More likely, their fate will be that of Greece, or say, Latvia. Latvia's situation is perhaps the more instructive. As the economy collapsed, Europe imposed such severe austerity than not only were conditions measurably worsened for Latvians, a considerable portion of the population abandoned their own country and went roaming Europe, Russia and the globe looking for work. Depopulation was policy.

And yet, despite the fact that Latvia's economy is still in shambles, the EU and many neo-liberal think tanks call it a stunning success for "austerity." Why? Because, after the near total collapse of the Latvian economy, it began to grow again, at a very modest pace. So. Success!

You would think that Ukrainians would know better by now than to trust any promise from Europe -- or Russia for that matter.

Meanwhile Dmitri Yarosh of Right Sektor (the agglomeration of fascist and Nazi parties even farther to the right than Svoboda) has declared the intent to sabotage the Russian oil and gas pipelines through Ukraine to Europe in order to "prevent World War III!!!!!!™. That ought to work out well...

Hail! Hail! Ukrainia!

Anglo-American Fascist Forecast

NATO’s Nazi Beginnings: How the West implemented Hitler’s goals  

Over at Willy Loman's Place, there is a link to an illuminating article by Robert S. Rodvik, of the Voltaire Network. Anyone who's familiar with Operation Paperclip and the origins of the CIA and MK Ultra and the rest of the shadow Anglo-American government (much of which we really know almost nothing about even now) will find the story of the origins and international intentions of NATO and other defense alliances and their relationship to fascist and Nazi programs -- indeed, their continuation of those programs -- to be familiar territory.

But the deep seated fascism of Our Governments and its Shadows is not widely recognized or appreciated. The idea that much of the infrastructure and superstructure of governments and international alliances that we take for granted -- or don't think of at all -- today came out of the adoption of Nazi and fascist policies and programs by Western powers after World War II seems bizarre and creepy at first glance.

And yet, there it is.

Not only were policies and programs adopted, so were personnel in many cases.

The outcome of WWII is still with us of course, but what lies behind the almost instantaneous transformation of the West, particularly the Anglo-American axis, into a Cold War with the Soviet Union and an endless litany of little hot wars everywhere to stem the tide of the International Communist Conspiracy is little understood.

That story is yet to be told in detail. It is another curtain still to be pulled back.

A BBC video from 1992 on just a part of it:






And here is The Stimulator on AntiFa and the Greek Thing: (Note: Foul Language and generally rebellious behavior)