When the propaganda shifted suddenly and completely from the deteriorating situation in Ukraine to the suddenly all-important matter of Boko Haram and its captive school-girls in Nigeria, it was obvious that the momentum of making a New Ukrainia using the neo-liberal template had been lost, and the killing spree that the Ukrainian "army" and its auxiliaries were on was not playing well in the media.
It was far too straightforward and ugly in Ukraine, so why not propose something heroic and daring in Africa instead? Rescue the schoolgirls! Yeah, that's the ticket! Others have figured out what the Africa thing is really about is turning loose the death squads (again) in that torn and troubled land, so as to continue colonial control of the resources and people of the continent. Schoolgirls, bah. If they're found and rescued, hurrah, if not, too bad, so sad. Pfft. If it were about them, there would have been much incessant news all along.
What's being instigated in Ukraine is truly disgusting, more so than anything Yanukovych and his kleptocrats engineered in their day. And it's clear that the makers of this mess are playing for keeps. They are relentless in their determination to impose as much hardship on the Ukrainian people -- and as much bloodshed and destruction in the East -- as they can get away with. Greece will seem like Paradise when they're done with Ukraine.
For all the hysteria and belligerence toward Putin-(Stalin-Hitler) and Russia and his "interference" in Ukraine, it appears that the Kremlin has decided to let them fight it out as they will. If anything, Russia's hands off policies and Putin's endless public efforts at conciliation are driving the Freaks in Kiev and their EU/US/NATO sponsors even nutzier than they were to begin with.
I'm told that Herself, Nuland-Kagan put on quite a show at the Senate Hearing on Russian Aggression the other day, but I haven't seen it yet -- one more thing to catch up on.
Meanwhile, how much longer will it take for Our Valiant Forces to Rescue the Nigerian Schoolgirls and Exterminate Yet Another Foe in Africa?
Stay tuned.
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Mercs in Ukraine?
Sure. Why not?
There have been reports of merc sightings in the shadows of the upheavals in Ukraine from the beginning, and almost certain descriptions of the snipers in Kiev as mercenaries hired by Svoboda and the Right Sektor. Many observers have claimed they've been hearing unaccented English spoken among some of these shadowy forces, just before some Antimaidan dissenter is shot or otherwise incapacitated, and it is reported that the FBI and CIA -- among other US agencies -- are coordinating the crackdown on dissent and separatism in the East and throughout the country.
Given what has been noted so far in the efforts of the Kiev coup-regime to hold onto the East (Donbass) in spite of the people's defiance and refusal, there are no doubt death squads on the pattern of so many we've seen in the past) operating throughout Ukraine. They may be concentrated for now in the Donbass, but there's no reason to think their assignments and territory won't be expanded as resistance to the Kiev coup-regime's program of suffering and exploitation -- under the direction of the IMF, EU, USA, and NATO -- increases.
Mercs are an essential part of the program, especially when -- as in the case of Ukraine -- poorly paid and trained native "troops" refuse to fight their brothers and sisters.
Of course, media announcements of "The 400" or however many Academi (or are they Blackwater?) mercs there are in Ukraine look to be quite obvious propaganda to inspire terror among the refusniks and rebels. It's obvious they have no fear of the so-called "army" forces arrayed against them, as so many of the videos uploaded from the region testify. Perhaps they will fear the mercenaries, then, eh? The ones who have no qualms about liquidating the untermenschen wherever they encounter them.
If Ukraine isn't already swarming with international mercs -- they don't have to be Americans, do they, hmm? -- ready to shed plenty of native blood for the cause of the bankers and exploiters and financiers and oppressor-class, it soon will be, no?
Monstrous.
There have been reports of merc sightings in the shadows of the upheavals in Ukraine from the beginning, and almost certain descriptions of the snipers in Kiev as mercenaries hired by Svoboda and the Right Sektor. Many observers have claimed they've been hearing unaccented English spoken among some of these shadowy forces, just before some Antimaidan dissenter is shot or otherwise incapacitated, and it is reported that the FBI and CIA -- among other US agencies -- are coordinating the crackdown on dissent and separatism in the East and throughout the country.
Given what has been noted so far in the efforts of the Kiev coup-regime to hold onto the East (Donbass) in spite of the people's defiance and refusal, there are no doubt death squads on the pattern of so many we've seen in the past) operating throughout Ukraine. They may be concentrated for now in the Donbass, but there's no reason to think their assignments and territory won't be expanded as resistance to the Kiev coup-regime's program of suffering and exploitation -- under the direction of the IMF, EU, USA, and NATO -- increases.
Mercs are an essential part of the program, especially when -- as in the case of Ukraine -- poorly paid and trained native "troops" refuse to fight their brothers and sisters.
Of course, media announcements of "The 400" or however many Academi (or are they Blackwater?) mercs there are in Ukraine look to be quite obvious propaganda to inspire terror among the refusniks and rebels. It's obvious they have no fear of the so-called "army" forces arrayed against them, as so many of the videos uploaded from the region testify. Perhaps they will fear the mercenaries, then, eh? The ones who have no qualms about liquidating the untermenschen wherever they encounter them.
If Ukraine isn't already swarming with international mercs -- they don't have to be Americans, do they, hmm? -- ready to shed plenty of native blood for the cause of the bankers and exploiters and financiers and oppressor-class, it soon will be, no?
Monstrous.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
First Division Ukraine 1 -- Odessa Massacre Investigative Report
First part is an examination of the Odessa riots on May 2 and the attack on the Trade Union building which caused the death of so many people. Some of the video clips are ones I've never seen before -- and they are chilling. Yuri Galshenko was reporting live for Vremya Odessa during the Massacre and he is extensively interviewed and his reporting is featured in this segment. I don't understand the language, so I don't know what he is saying, but overall, it appears from the visuals that the segment is more balanced and truthful than many of the reports that have come out of Ukraine.
______________________________________-
This is a link to some raw video compilations from the May 2 Massacre, some of which I saw as it was internet streamed live that night.
Ukraine Update
 |
| Voters casting ballots in Mariupol, May 11, 2014 |
Huh?
What's this "Ukraine?" of which you speak? That's so last week! Time to move on.
This week the issue is Boko Haram and all those schoolgirls forced into captivity in Nigeria, and their impending rescue by AFRICOM troops, Valiant and Brave.
Ukraine is so over.
It's All Africa All the Time now, baby. Get with the program!
[As for Breaking Bad, I hear it wasn't renewed...]
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Thursday's Special Meeting of the Albuquerque City Council
Video of some of the silent protest at Albuquerque City Council's Special Meeting Thursday, May 8, 2014, video from Albuquerque Journal
I made the grievous and rather silly error the other day of watching the archived video of the infamous Monday, May 5, 2014, (Cinco de Mayo, no?) take-over of the Albuquerque City Council meeting and writing about it as if it were taking place live. Mea maxima culpa, but that's what happens as I try to juggle too many things, and in the process make too many assumptions about what is going on.
I watched much of Thursday's special meeting of the Albuquerque City Council -- called to make up for the aborted Monday meeting -- live as it happened, and I've now seen quite a lot of video from both the Monday and Thursday meetings, and I've got to say, parts are as deeply moving as anything I've seen in civic affairs.
No, to be completely honest, I've never seen anything quite so moving in my long experience with city council meetings, most of which I've found to be boring as sin, deceptively manipulated by staff, and minor opportunities for electeds to grandstand on matters they really don't care about at all.
When the public tries to use the mechanism of the city council to make major -- or even minor -- changes in the way the city operations are conducted (for example, by attempts to curb the outrageous behavior of the police) city staff will routinely subvert and interfere with those efforts, leaving both the council and the public wondering what just happened. I've seen it time after time in California, and I've witnessed the same dynamic in Albuquerque.
But something different has been going on through the long years of public advocacy of reform of the APD. For years, there wasn't much progress, or rather what progress there was amounted to eyewash -- the typical subversion tactic of city staff -- with no substantive power or point.
In Albuquerque, the situation deteriorated rather than improved, and between 2010 and now, dozens have been shot and killed by Albuquerque police, seemingly at a greater rate since the DoJ issued its scathing report on the matter than before it.
The public crisis of confidence in the police is mirrored by the internal crisis within the APD. The two have waltzed hand in hand for years, but now it's reached the point where something must be done, for the current status quo is unsustainable.
The fact is that the police are killing people they shouldn't even be shooting, and they've been getting away with it in the face of growing public outrage and opposition. The notorious video of the summary execution in March of James Boyd, a homeless, mentally ill camper in the Sandia foothills, touched such a nerve in the community that opposition swelled to a level that it could not be ignored any further, could not be shunted to the side, could not be treated with disdain, and the victims could no longer be held entirely to blame for their own fate. Things had gone too far.
The protest movement grew by leaps and bounds, and street protests involving hundreds or thousands were complemented by Anonymous's -- the international "hacker" consortium -- calls for protest demonstrations and attacks on the city and police internet presence, constant vigils at sites of police killings, and more and more calls for action by city officials to curb the killing spree the police were on. Calls increased for their resignation and indictment if they continued to refuse to act.
Finally, the DoJ's scathing report on APD misconduct and misuse of lethal force was issued. It didn't stop the killing spree, however. Far from it.
No, instead, the killing spree goes on at an even greater rate than before, as if the very fact that so many people are pointing out how wrong it all is inspires the police to even greater levels of carnage and bloodshed.
Nobody calls for a cease fire.
Or if they do, the calls go unheeded.
And yet the killing must stop and it will. For now, the police are resisting any reform or accountability and claiming that their union contract prohibits any policy changes they don't agree with; since they refuse to agree to any reforms or accountability, there won't be any. That's basically been their stance throughout the uproar and outrage -- for decades.
Yes, this has been going on for decades. Some date the beginning of the modern police killing spree to the Roosevelt Park Riots of 1971, others point it actually began well before that, and protests have been taking place since the 1960's. "Reforms" aplenty have been proposed and supposedly implemented, but none have been effective. The police defy any effort at reform they don't wish to follow. And they almost always get away with it.
Why? Of course, there is plenty of culpability and complicity at the highest levels of civic authority. No one has shown less interest in real reform than the current Mayor, Richard Berry, or the current Chief Administrative Officer, Robert Perry, whose authority in the matter is significant, but who are fundamentally aligned with interests who see the problem from the point of view of those who desire the suppression of inconvenient or undesirable portions of the population and find that killing them is a good way to dispose of troublesome members of the community, and an excellent way of terrorizing survivors into compliance. They've been fine with the killing spree all along. It's never bothered them in the least.
Even when it sometimes hits close to home. Some of those who have been killed by APD are relatives of reasonably prominent people, including judges and civic/county executive staff. Others are simply ordinary people trying to get by as best they can. Still others are members of designated out groups -- homeless, mentally ill, vagabonds, brown or black "gang" members, drug users and abusers, and various other kinds of outlaws. In other words, people who obviously "need killing" in the lexicon of the Wild West.
Poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, petty criminality and mental illness are common -- but by no means universal -- attributes among the victims. They're so common as to be expected. Among the common attributes of the police who are so quick on the trigger is a culture of impunity and dishonesty. That culture goes right to the top, and though it is not universal, it is so common as to be expected.
Killing the victims is considered to be an effective means of "human waste disposal," as one killer-cop described his job on some social media. Who is he performing that job for? Though he may identify strongly with the ones to whom he renders service, I wonder if it ever dawned on him that he is just as "disposable" in the eyes of the ones he serves.
Tens of millions of dollars have been paid out in settlements on behalf of citizens who have been killed or abused by Albuquerque police, and there is no end in sight to the payouts. It's one of the stranger aspects of the issue in that city officials by and large don't consider the expense to the to the taxpayers for police misconduct to be of much concern. Apparently, they see it as just a cost of doing business, whereas the $130,000 or so the city claims it cost in bond market basis points for the uproar that shut down the city council meeting last Monday was treated as if it were the most horrendous and momentous matter in the history of the city (and that's only a slight exaggeration.) The absurdity and upside down priority is grotesque.
I have no doubt that the demonstrations and protests will continue until there is significant, positive change in the way the city operates its police department. The people involved know what they are doing and they are relentless.
They've been at it a long time and they are close to success achieving important objectives. But they've made very clear that they're in this for the long haul, on behalf of Americans in general. Police misconduct and misuse of lethal force is a national epidemic. They're hoping, as I hope, that the resolution in Albuquerque will serve as a model for police reform and future conduct throughout the country.
Saturday, May 10, 2014
All of Them Terrorists
According to the Freaks in the Kiev Coup-Regime. All of them. Terrorists.
Celebrants at the Victory Day commemoration at Slo/avyansk, May 9, 2014
If anything, this one is even more moving for me than the annual Victory Day parade in Moscow.
(Via anonymous commenter at Vinyard of the Saker)
Celebrants at the Victory Day commemoration at Slo/avyansk, May 9, 2014
If anything, this one is even more moving for me than the annual Victory Day parade in Moscow.
(Via anonymous commenter at Vinyard of the Saker)
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)
(Via Michael Whitney at Counterpunch, h/t teri49 in comments... sorry it took me so long to post the h/t)
Still Trying to Do Amateur Forensics on the Odessa Massacre
This is the most complete video I've so far seen of the interior of the Trade Union House in Odessa where so many were killed on May 2.
Video streaming by Ustream
I confess, I haven't seen it all yet, as I've been juggling a whole bunch of other stuff, including an injured cat. But what I have seen confirms some of my previous suspicions.
Most of the building was not burned at all. The deadly fire was in the entrance lobby and the rear stairwell with which the lobby connects. From the indications in this and other videos of the interior after the flames were put out, and from testimony of survivors I've read, once the Anti-Maidan activists gained entrance to the building on May 2 -- whether they broke in or were let in to the entrance lobby remains to be determined -- they erected a makeshift barricade from materials at hand. The remains of that barricade are still visible in the video above. Those remains are mostly metal, and exactly what was in the barricade is hard to determine from the ashes, scraps and twisted bars that could be seen when the video was shot on May 4. It appears from the burnt debris of the barricade that it was fairly substantial.
Based on what's in other videos I've seen, it appears that the fire started in the lobby, probably in the barricade itself, after several Molotov cocktails were hurled through the entrance doors. One of the doors appeared to be open as the flames consumed whatever was inside, and they all seemed to have glass panels, which could have been broken by the mob outside. Consequently, the doors didn't provide any substantial protection.
There are now a number of videos posted which show the nearly free access Right Sektor thugs had to the building both before and after the fire started. They were able to break in at the side entrances, and dozens of them were roaming the place seeking out and murdering victims all through the time that
Anti-Maidan activists were attempting to shelter inside. This is of interest in part because they were inside the building as the fire in the entrance lobby suddenly and spectacularly raced up the stairwell, killing what appeared to be more than a dozen people almost instantly.
Visible in the early videos of the charred bodies on the steps are makeshift barricades that those on the steps appeared to have erected to prevent people from coming down the steps. This suggests to me that there were Right Sektor thugs roaming the upper floors before the fire started, and there are videos of people in the windows of the upper floors waving the Ukrainian flag -- to loud and raucous cheers below -- as the fire was burning and people were trying to get out of the windows of offices at the front of the building.
This link is to quite a long video that shows efforts of people to escape the building by climbing out front windows. It also shows efforts at rescue made by members of the crowd prior to the arrival of the fire brigade hoses and ladders. At one point, a man in a red jacket or sweatshirt is seen hurling a Molotov cocktail at the building, apparently aiming for some of those trying to escape. He is admonished by another man in the crowd, and he seems disappointed that his efforts were not appreciated. He appears later to hurl invective (one assumes) at those trying to escape the building. There is also a portion of the video where someone appears in a top floor window waving a Ukrainian flag to the lusty chants of "U-krai-na!" from the crowd below, as terrified people stand or crouch in the windows.
Once the fire brigade arrives, they are able to put the fire in the lobby out within a very short time.
Numerous videos show Right Sektor access to the building.
Here are a few links:
http://youtu.be/lkqfL8gf1Qg
http://youtu.be/5Z8WzYegg5o
http://youtu.be/yt2XoYCohEI
(above link is to a 1:17:22 video compilation which includes many scenes inside the building from the POV of rampaging Right Sektor thugs. Also shows a lot of dead bodies of people who didn't die in the fire.)
http://youtu.be/9pUGJud91VY
(This one appears to show the first stage of the fire in the lobby, but not the outbreak itself. There is also a shot of someone holding a Ukrainian flag in a fourth floor window as the fire is burning in the lobby below.)
http://youtu.be/qvKTe7QnLeo
(In addition to much else, this one shows the fire brigade at the back of the building and fires burning on the second and fourth floors of the stairwell.)
http://youtu.be/FEXmGQEoruw
(Thugs rampaging inside, a fire burning on the stairway. Fire appears to be from a Molotov cocktail tossed through the window. No one appears to notice....)
http://youtu.be/NeARQM1HLF8
(WARNING: Graphic. This was live video taken as soon as news cameras could get in the building; many burned bodies, also bodies of people apparently shot inside or otherwise killed inside.)
http://youtu.be/d7cB_u89bbo
(This is some of the video I saw live on the Vremya Odessa livestream the night of May 2; there are bodies in unburned offices that have been trashed, and one in a stairwell. These people were most likely murdered rather than overcome with smoke.)
http://youtu.be/xPwbpVbF6R8
(This is an infamous video taken from Right Sektor POV immediately after most of the survivors had gotten out. There are dead bodies, and efforts are made to prove the "terrorists" are Russian. They aren't successful. Pisses 'em off.)
People tried to barricade themselves in offices for protection and sometimes they were successful. But there appear to have been many murders inside as well.
Of course the Odessa "authorities" have no interest in investigating those murders, only the ones they say took place at the riots and among the mob outside -- murders they say were caused by "Anti-Maidan" elements.
This is, as I've said before, a purely Nazi tactic. Accuse the victims of what the perpetrators have done, and "prove" it through whatever means necessary.
It's shameful enough that the so-called "government" in Kiev and its local appointees in Odessa are pulling this shit; worse though is the support they're getting from all the capitals of the EU/NATO/US axis, every single one. They're all denying that Right Sektor and other fascist thugs are responsible for any of the atrocities of the past week. Couldn't be. As all the racist thugs are Russian under Putin's direct order and control. Everyone knows that.
Still, I ask, how did the fire that killed so many people get started, and what fueled it to such intensity and prolongation?*
It's a question that goes to the nature of the fire itself, who started it and how, and how was it sustained for such a long time in an portion of the building that provided so little fuel?
The Odessa Massacre itself has become an iconic event in the current Ukrainian crisis, one that no doubt will be remembered down the ages. Propaganda is so intense around it that truth is liable to be hidden for some time to come.
Yet in the barrage of propaganda we're exposed to, it's important, in my view, to at least try to understand what really happened.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: I have since seen a Vremya Odessa interview with one of the investigators of the May 2 Massacre, and he said -- at least to the extent I was able to translate what he was saying -- that there was no explosion in the building, and that the fire shot up the back stairwell as if up a chimney, which is what I had suspected all along. The question remains, though, what caused a fire that had been burning in the lobby for a while to suddenly shoot up the stairwell, catching so many people in its smoke and flame.
Several things come to mind:
1)The fire was initially burning in the south end of the lobby. Early video shows no fire visible through the two northern entrances.
2)The door to the south entrance was open, however, which allowed flames and smoke to escape from the lobby to the front of the building.
3)The windows in the stairwell were broken out at some point which I haven't been able to determine. There were defenders on landings throwing stones and other objects out of the broken windows at the mob below. Members of the mob were hurling Molotov cocktails into the building through the broken stairwell windows.
4)For some time there was very little smoke coming out of the broken stairwell windows, and then suddenly there was a great deal of smoke and flames were seen shooting through the second floor windows. That's when men (and at least one woman?) jumped out of the stairwell windows, some apparently from the top floor, landing in the parking area at the foot of the stairwell, most badly injured. According to recent statistics, seven victims died in "falls" -- one assumes that means jumping out of windows. Eight were killed by gunshots. The rest of the now 48 dead died in the fire, either overcome by flame or by smoke or both. One man made it half way out of a window before he was overcome and his burnt body remained half-way out of the window until after the fire was extinguished and the bodies were collected.
5)The suddenness of flame and smoke racing up the stairwell -- when there had been very little smoke and no flame (except that caused by Molotov cocktails hurled from below) coming out of the stairwell previously, despite the fact that a fire was burning vigorously in the lobby -- suggests that either the direction of the wind changed, blowing smoke and flame from the front of the building toward the back, or some highly flammable material suddenly caught fire which massively increased the amount of smoke and flame in the lobby which could only escape through the stairwell. Of course, both could have happened simultaneously.
6) Members of the mob are seen in some videos throwing materials from the debris outside the front entrance toward the entrance doors. I haven't seen any video that shows that any of the debris they were hurling toward the front entrance actually made it inside, but it could have. Among the debris being thrown toward the entrance were tires, pallets and other wooden debris, no doubt in order to feed the fire.
7)In one of the videos of the fire's aftermath in the lobby, there are two relatively large burnt metal containers on the steps. Did they contain a flammable liquid? There's no way to know from the video. But if they did contain something like gasoline, they might not have exploded, but they could well have burst into flame with sudden and significant force of both flame and smoke.
I will say that some of the mob outside the building seemed shocked, even horrified, when they realized what was happening, and many helped to rescue people from the burning building. Nevertheless, many of those who escaped the fire were badly beaten by the mob, and dozens were arrested and held by the police until they were released after loud and forceful protests.
Video streaming by Ustream
I confess, I haven't seen it all yet, as I've been juggling a whole bunch of other stuff, including an injured cat. But what I have seen confirms some of my previous suspicions.
Most of the building was not burned at all. The deadly fire was in the entrance lobby and the rear stairwell with which the lobby connects. From the indications in this and other videos of the interior after the flames were put out, and from testimony of survivors I've read, once the Anti-Maidan activists gained entrance to the building on May 2 -- whether they broke in or were let in to the entrance lobby remains to be determined -- they erected a makeshift barricade from materials at hand. The remains of that barricade are still visible in the video above. Those remains are mostly metal, and exactly what was in the barricade is hard to determine from the ashes, scraps and twisted bars that could be seen when the video was shot on May 4. It appears from the burnt debris of the barricade that it was fairly substantial.
Based on what's in other videos I've seen, it appears that the fire started in the lobby, probably in the barricade itself, after several Molotov cocktails were hurled through the entrance doors. One of the doors appeared to be open as the flames consumed whatever was inside, and they all seemed to have glass panels, which could have been broken by the mob outside. Consequently, the doors didn't provide any substantial protection.
There are now a number of videos posted which show the nearly free access Right Sektor thugs had to the building both before and after the fire started. They were able to break in at the side entrances, and dozens of them were roaming the place seeking out and murdering victims all through the time that
Anti-Maidan activists were attempting to shelter inside. This is of interest in part because they were inside the building as the fire in the entrance lobby suddenly and spectacularly raced up the stairwell, killing what appeared to be more than a dozen people almost instantly.
Visible in the early videos of the charred bodies on the steps are makeshift barricades that those on the steps appeared to have erected to prevent people from coming down the steps. This suggests to me that there were Right Sektor thugs roaming the upper floors before the fire started, and there are videos of people in the windows of the upper floors waving the Ukrainian flag -- to loud and raucous cheers below -- as the fire was burning and people were trying to get out of the windows of offices at the front of the building.
This link is to quite a long video that shows efforts of people to escape the building by climbing out front windows. It also shows efforts at rescue made by members of the crowd prior to the arrival of the fire brigade hoses and ladders. At one point, a man in a red jacket or sweatshirt is seen hurling a Molotov cocktail at the building, apparently aiming for some of those trying to escape. He is admonished by another man in the crowd, and he seems disappointed that his efforts were not appreciated. He appears later to hurl invective (one assumes) at those trying to escape the building. There is also a portion of the video where someone appears in a top floor window waving a Ukrainian flag to the lusty chants of "U-krai-na!" from the crowd below, as terrified people stand or crouch in the windows.
Once the fire brigade arrives, they are able to put the fire in the lobby out within a very short time.
Numerous videos show Right Sektor access to the building.
Here are a few links:
http://youtu.be/lkqfL8gf1Qg
http://youtu.be/5Z8WzYegg5o
http://youtu.be/yt2XoYCohEI
(above link is to a 1:17:22 video compilation which includes many scenes inside the building from the POV of rampaging Right Sektor thugs. Also shows a lot of dead bodies of people who didn't die in the fire.)
http://youtu.be/9pUGJud91VY
(This one appears to show the first stage of the fire in the lobby, but not the outbreak itself. There is also a shot of someone holding a Ukrainian flag in a fourth floor window as the fire is burning in the lobby below.)
http://youtu.be/qvKTe7QnLeo
(In addition to much else, this one shows the fire brigade at the back of the building and fires burning on the second and fourth floors of the stairwell.)
http://youtu.be/FEXmGQEoruw
(Thugs rampaging inside, a fire burning on the stairway. Fire appears to be from a Molotov cocktail tossed through the window. No one appears to notice....)
http://youtu.be/NeARQM1HLF8
(WARNING: Graphic. This was live video taken as soon as news cameras could get in the building; many burned bodies, also bodies of people apparently shot inside or otherwise killed inside.)
http://youtu.be/d7cB_u89bbo
(This is some of the video I saw live on the Vremya Odessa livestream the night of May 2; there are bodies in unburned offices that have been trashed, and one in a stairwell. These people were most likely murdered rather than overcome with smoke.)
http://youtu.be/xPwbpVbF6R8
(This is an infamous video taken from Right Sektor POV immediately after most of the survivors had gotten out. There are dead bodies, and efforts are made to prove the "terrorists" are Russian. They aren't successful. Pisses 'em off.)
People tried to barricade themselves in offices for protection and sometimes they were successful. But there appear to have been many murders inside as well.
Of course the Odessa "authorities" have no interest in investigating those murders, only the ones they say took place at the riots and among the mob outside -- murders they say were caused by "Anti-Maidan" elements.
This is, as I've said before, a purely Nazi tactic. Accuse the victims of what the perpetrators have done, and "prove" it through whatever means necessary.
It's shameful enough that the so-called "government" in Kiev and its local appointees in Odessa are pulling this shit; worse though is the support they're getting from all the capitals of the EU/NATO/US axis, every single one. They're all denying that Right Sektor and other fascist thugs are responsible for any of the atrocities of the past week. Couldn't be. As all the racist thugs are Russian under Putin's direct order and control. Everyone knows that.
Still, I ask, how did the fire that killed so many people get started, and what fueled it to such intensity and prolongation?*
It's a question that goes to the nature of the fire itself, who started it and how, and how was it sustained for such a long time in an portion of the building that provided so little fuel?
The Odessa Massacre itself has become an iconic event in the current Ukrainian crisis, one that no doubt will be remembered down the ages. Propaganda is so intense around it that truth is liable to be hidden for some time to come.
Yet in the barrage of propaganda we're exposed to, it's important, in my view, to at least try to understand what really happened.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: I have since seen a Vremya Odessa interview with one of the investigators of the May 2 Massacre, and he said -- at least to the extent I was able to translate what he was saying -- that there was no explosion in the building, and that the fire shot up the back stairwell as if up a chimney, which is what I had suspected all along. The question remains, though, what caused a fire that had been burning in the lobby for a while to suddenly shoot up the stairwell, catching so many people in its smoke and flame.
Several things come to mind:
1)The fire was initially burning in the south end of the lobby. Early video shows no fire visible through the two northern entrances.
2)The door to the south entrance was open, however, which allowed flames and smoke to escape from the lobby to the front of the building.
3)The windows in the stairwell were broken out at some point which I haven't been able to determine. There were defenders on landings throwing stones and other objects out of the broken windows at the mob below. Members of the mob were hurling Molotov cocktails into the building through the broken stairwell windows.
4)For some time there was very little smoke coming out of the broken stairwell windows, and then suddenly there was a great deal of smoke and flames were seen shooting through the second floor windows. That's when men (and at least one woman?) jumped out of the stairwell windows, some apparently from the top floor, landing in the parking area at the foot of the stairwell, most badly injured. According to recent statistics, seven victims died in "falls" -- one assumes that means jumping out of windows. Eight were killed by gunshots. The rest of the now 48 dead died in the fire, either overcome by flame or by smoke or both. One man made it half way out of a window before he was overcome and his burnt body remained half-way out of the window until after the fire was extinguished and the bodies were collected.
5)The suddenness of flame and smoke racing up the stairwell -- when there had been very little smoke and no flame (except that caused by Molotov cocktails hurled from below) coming out of the stairwell previously, despite the fact that a fire was burning vigorously in the lobby -- suggests that either the direction of the wind changed, blowing smoke and flame from the front of the building toward the back, or some highly flammable material suddenly caught fire which massively increased the amount of smoke and flame in the lobby which could only escape through the stairwell. Of course, both could have happened simultaneously.
6) Members of the mob are seen in some videos throwing materials from the debris outside the front entrance toward the entrance doors. I haven't seen any video that shows that any of the debris they were hurling toward the front entrance actually made it inside, but it could have. Among the debris being thrown toward the entrance were tires, pallets and other wooden debris, no doubt in order to feed the fire.
7)In one of the videos of the fire's aftermath in the lobby, there are two relatively large burnt metal containers on the steps. Did they contain a flammable liquid? There's no way to know from the video. But if they did contain something like gasoline, they might not have exploded, but they could well have burst into flame with sudden and significant force of both flame and smoke.
I will say that some of the mob outside the building seemed shocked, even horrified, when they realized what was happening, and many helped to rescue people from the burning building. Nevertheless, many of those who escaped the fire were badly beaten by the mob, and dozens were arrested and held by the police until they were released after loud and forceful protests.
Friday, May 9, 2014
They're Cowards
Reports and some video have been coming in from Mariupol, where apparently more than 100 have been killed and many hundreds injured when so-called "troops" opened fire on a large crowd, estimated at ten thousand or more, gathered to celebrate Victory Day.
The only videos I've seen so far are various angles of the scene shown in the previous post, in Mariupol.
This one shows the situation leading up to the shootings in the video (it gets pretty gory, so be warned):
While the view is clouded by something smeared on the camera lens, you can see the scene well enough to note that as the camera person gets closer to the intersection, a soldier is seen crouching down at the corner of a building while a young man in civilian clothes taunts him. Across the street there is another soldier who is shouting. APCs rattle by, and the man in civilian clothes goes to the middle of the street as they do, arms out, hurling taunts. Somebody shoots him and he crumbles to the street. Others go to his aid, and he's out of view of the camera for some time. I can't tell who shot him but I suspect it was the first soldier he was taunting.
The crowd is angry and shouting. Soldiers are trying to get across the street. There is what sounds like a lot of gunfire. In another video of the same scene, a man in a suit who is photographing the situation near the kiosk is shot in the leg. Another man is apparently shot near the kiosk. A fourth man is seen lying on the street beside the cafe tent, and a fifth is seen lying in a pool of blood in front of the tent entrance. He's been shot through the head.
Still the crowd taunts the soldiers, who by this time have run away. They're complete cowards.
Which has something to do with why members of the APD feel they must shoot so many suspects.
They're terrified of the people. Frightened to death, and they believe that if they don't shoot first, they will be killed.
This is the mindset they're conditioned to believe, and they do.
But it is the mindset of cowards, terrified of their own shadows, and if they didn't have a gun, most of them would shit their pants.
On the other hand, the people in the streets taunting and insulting the cowardly shooters are truly brave, and much the same scene plays out time and again at the sites of police shootings.
The same conditioning, the same mindset, the same cowardice on the part of the armed, the same bravery on the part of the unarmed.
The only videos I've seen so far are various angles of the scene shown in the previous post, in Mariupol.
This one shows the situation leading up to the shootings in the video (it gets pretty gory, so be warned):
While the view is clouded by something smeared on the camera lens, you can see the scene well enough to note that as the camera person gets closer to the intersection, a soldier is seen crouching down at the corner of a building while a young man in civilian clothes taunts him. Across the street there is another soldier who is shouting. APCs rattle by, and the man in civilian clothes goes to the middle of the street as they do, arms out, hurling taunts. Somebody shoots him and he crumbles to the street. Others go to his aid, and he's out of view of the camera for some time. I can't tell who shot him but I suspect it was the first soldier he was taunting.
The crowd is angry and shouting. Soldiers are trying to get across the street. There is what sounds like a lot of gunfire. In another video of the same scene, a man in a suit who is photographing the situation near the kiosk is shot in the leg. Another man is apparently shot near the kiosk. A fourth man is seen lying on the street beside the cafe tent, and a fifth is seen lying in a pool of blood in front of the tent entrance. He's been shot through the head.
Still the crowd taunts the soldiers, who by this time have run away. They're complete cowards.
Which has something to do with why members of the APD feel they must shoot so many suspects.
They're terrified of the people. Frightened to death, and they believe that if they don't shoot first, they will be killed.
This is the mindset they're conditioned to believe, and they do.
But it is the mindset of cowards, terrified of their own shadows, and if they didn't have a gun, most of them would shit their pants.
On the other hand, the people in the streets taunting and insulting the cowardly shooters are truly brave, and much the same scene plays out time and again at the sites of police shootings.
The same conditioning, the same mindset, the same cowardice on the part of the armed, the same bravery on the part of the unarmed.
Today in Mariupol
The People respond to the Kiev-coup regime's attempts to enforce their rule by deployment of "soldiers" who fire into the crowds.
Several were shot and killed in this incident. Graham Phillips' Twitter has pictures of the gruesome aftermath. He says hospitals report up to a hundred killed. Monstrous.
The citizens show no fear, nonetheless.
Several were shot and killed in this incident. Graham Phillips' Twitter has pictures of the gruesome aftermath. He says hospitals report up to a hundred killed. Monstrous.
The citizens show no fear, nonetheless.
Victory Day Parade, Moscow Red Square, May 9, 2014
Full video from RT.com of today's Victory Day Parade in Red Square.
There was a time when this parade, which has taken place annually in Moscow since victory over the Nazis in 1945, was considered nothing but Communist propaganda. That's the way it was presented to school-kids during the height of the Cold War, and that's all I thought it was until much later in my life when I learned just how awful the War had been for the Soviets, how many millions had died in combat and from the effects of the War, and how grateful the survivors were.
None of this was even hinted at during the many years of anti-Communist propaganda which Americans were subjected to every day.
Since I learned of what sacrifices Soviet citizens and soldiers made during the War, which they call The Great Patriotic War, I've seen this parade quite differently. Many of the older people who attend the ceremonies, dripping with their Soviet medals and ribbons, cannot hold back their emotions. Nor should they. What they went through and survived is almost inconceivable to most Americans who have no idea to this day how immense the battles were in Russia and the Soviet Union, and how determined was the Soviet defense.
Every time I see this parade, I empathize so strongly with those who sacrificed so much to ensure the survival of their nation and their progeny.
I doubt there's been anything else approaching it in human history.
ПОЗДРАВЛЯЕМ!!! УРА!!!
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And of course, "Putin is the New Hitler..." Or for the Nazis in Ukraine, he's "The New Stalin." Pfft.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
News From Odessa
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| To protect and serve |
o1.ua reports that there are two Right Sektor paramilitary "security" brigades occupying
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.
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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.
Albquerque City Council Shut Down Again [CORRECTED]
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| Tumult at the Albuquerque City Council -- pic from Monday's meeting which was shut down by protesters |
I was surprised when I saw it happening on the livestream, because I expected the activists to be polite and to follow the new rules -- which prohibited the display of signs and banners at the podium and limited public comment to 2 minutes each, among other things.
The public remained polite throughout the council's special business (they were meeting as a committee of the whole rather than the Council per se) and when the public comment period commenced, most speakers were very polite, almost baroque in their politesse toward the Councilors (oh yes, they know how to play this game).
And then David Correia was called upon to speak, and tumult and uproar ensued. Ken Sanchez, the President of the Council, gavelled the meeting into recess (he said for five minutes, but it was less than two) saying "This meeting is out of control!" and the councilors left the chambers while activists took over.
When he returned, Sanchez found that the tumult hadn't abated a bit and declared the meeting adjourned. (I'm sure someone can dig into the formalities of it all, but I don't think that meetings can be adjourned without a motion and a second.)
There was a full City Council special meeting scheduled for 8pm but as far as I could tell, it didn't happen.
[NOTE: This posting was based on what I saw on the Abq city council livestream last night. It was labeled "live" but it was actually an archived video. It was a replay of Monday's debacle, which I had not previously seen, so I didn't recognize it as having run previously. No archived video of the Monday meeting was available when I checked previously. Mea maxima culpa, for not being up to date on what was being shown.]
I noted that despite all the news cameras that were there, and the fact that the meeting was taking place during local or national news broadcasts (I was watching NBC, for example, and a fairly extensive report on Monday's shut-down, including an interview with David Correia, was aired just as public comment at last night's meeting began), there was no local teevee coverage of last night's shut down of the 5pm council meeting. How interesting.
None of the mainstream outlets -- whether print or television -- have so far even mentioned it, despite the fact that they were clearly in attendance.
Interesting indeed.
Even La Jicarita -- David Correia's news blog -- doesn't have a story up about last night's tumult yet. I can understand, somewhat, why there wouldn't be anything new at the Jicarita site, in part because of Correia's pretty intense media interview schedule of late, but no news at all, anywhere, is somewhat bewildering.
What I saw last night on the city's livestream was that the audience appeared to be mostly made up of anti-police abuse activists, ones that those interested in the topic have come to know relatively well. I saw many of them at the DoJ community meeting I attended, and the same ones have been active against the common "shoot first" culture of APD for a LONG time. These people are not amateurs. They know what they are doing, and causing disruption of this sort is a necessary tactic when the forces against which they are aligned refuse to budge.
The members of the audience held signs and chanted before the meeting began, but once Sanchez began the meeting, the signs were put away and the audience quieted. The proclamations and such that were on the agenda were taken care of, and the floor was opened to public comment.
Ken Ellis (whose son was killed by APD as he put a gun to his own head) was called, but he deferred to another who spoke eloquently against police violence, and so it went. One after another, people spoke in near unanimity about the pressing need to rein in police violence in Albuquerque. One man explained the moral duty the council had to do something about it, and deplored the fact that they hadn't done anything.
He was asked by a councilor to tell them what should be done, and the man said that he'd shared his opinions extensively with the DoJ and he couldn't possibly list all the things the council should be doing under the time constraints of the rules. Another councilor stated that not one of his constituents had ever told him that they agreed with the man's position. This led to a good deal of booing the audience and the suggestion that he'd probably never spoken with anyone who didn't have lots of money. He denied it, but it's probably true.
One speaker mentioned that once again, the same councilor "wasn't listening", he was looking at his I-Pad throughout public comment. And as he'd done before the councilor (whose name I won't bother to look up right now) showed his laptop screen (it wasn't an I-Pad) and said he "was reading the DoJ Report" while listening to public speakers. I thought I heard someone in the audience call out, "Liar!" but I can't be sure.
Other speakers brought up specific suggestions of what the council could and should be doing to rein in police abuse, and pointed out they'd done nothing. If a video is posted, I'll try to review these suggestions. They were made by one of the members of the Police Oversight Commission -- who resigned in disgust when the City Attorney and the City Administrator essentially made their jobs impossible by interpreting the ordinance that established the Commission "contrary to the plain language" of the ordinance and told them their only function was to agree with the Independent Review Officer who was charged with looking into police abuse complaints and had never found any to be justified. Ever.
One speaker very politely ended her comment with the subtle chanting of "No justice, no peace... no justice, no peace" -- a chant taken up by other members of the audience in such a low-key and quiet manner that I'm sure some of the councilors saw it as a threat.
When David Correia was called to speak, he began in a relatively low key manner, but he became more and more strident, making demands and calling for the people's arrest of the police chief. When Sanchez told him his time was up, he said he wouldn't stop speaking because the council wasn't listening to the people, and it was time the people held their own People's Council. Others joined in, threw papers into the air and that's when Sanchez said the meeting was in recess, and then, when the people would not sit down and shut up he called it adjourned.
It was quite a show. In my view, this sort of theater and disobedience, the discomfort and discommoding of the comfortable and complacent is necessary for there to be change of the kind called for here when the police and establishment insist they need to make no change and refuse to do so, as has long been the case in Albuquerque.
It's not that no one in office cares, it is that no one who can do anything about the appalling and bloody behavior of the police will do anything. Instead, they routinely divert, deny, and distract.
For its part, APD has been increasing the death rate under its guns, not ratcheting it back, and the police spokespeople have been nothing if not disputatious and defiant in the face of DoJ and international criticism of their behavior and killer culture.
Much of the media has become alarmed enough about the situation that they have taken to calling names and ridiculing the protesters as if they were somehow alien intruders who needed a lesson in deportment and courtesy, completely ignoring the fact that APD keeps right on killing people. This is the problem with the council, mayor, police chief, city attorney, district attorney, and city administrator as well. APD keeps right on killing and killing more frequently, all these city officials and much of the media take the opportunity before them to denounce and criticize the protesters not the police.
They claim they've criticized the police already, and they are "working on" reforms, but the people have heard that before, many times before, and nothing changes. The killing goes on and on and on, with the same official response or lack thereof.
Over and over and over again.
So the objective now is to make it impossible for the status quo to continue any longer. To shame the police, the council, the mayor, the police chief, the city administrator, the city attorney and the district attorney in as many ways and as frequently as possible. National and international attention is being brought to their failings -- and to the spiraling death rate from police gunfire in Albuquerque.
Many of those involved in the demonstrations have declared their willingness to go to jail over the issue, and the sight of them being dragged away is sure to raise even more antagonism and animosity toward Official Albuquerque.
So far, arrests have only been threatened.
The basic issue is that Official Albuquerque is digging in its heels or spinning its wheels while the killing continues unabated. They speak airily about "reform" but do nothing. They insist the protesters are the problem while people are being shot down again and again and again in the streets. Police violence has got to stop.
It's that simple.
And the people who are taking over the city council meetings will not relent until police violence is stopped. It's been a long battle already, but it looks to be reaching the climactic phase.
I wish them well.
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David Correia's statement to the Council which he read on Monday night, and partially read at Thursday's special meeting.
CORRECTION!!!: There wasn't a city council meeting last night. It wasn't shut down again. I misconstrued an apparent livestream on the city video feed (labeled as "live") as a an actual, happening now, live event. It was instead a replay of Monday's aborted meeting. The actual live stream is going on right now. Lesson learned.
I hope!
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Did Putin Just Blink?
Reports are coming in that Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian troops to withdraw from the Ukrainian border and the Russian government is urging the so-called "separatists" in the East and South to postpone the referendum on Ukrainian federalism they had scheduled for May 11.
These are extraordinary developments if true.
The main story on the matter that I've read so far is this one in the New York Times (I know, I know...)
Putin has consistently behaved like the firm but ultimately conciliatory adult in the room during the Ukrainian upheavals that commenced when ousted president Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign a partnership agreement with the EU in November of last year.
While the coup-regime in Kiev has become more and more brutal and authoritarian toward resistance among Russians and Russian speakers, particularly in the East and South of the fragmenting nation, indeed launching military operations against refusniks and rebels in the East and precipitating a horrific massacre of civilians in Odessa, the Russian Federation president has been remarkably calm and deliberate in his arguments and actions, despite the increasingly shrill and bellicose rhetoric out of Kiev, Brussels, Berlin, London, and especially Washington, DC.
If indeed Putin has "blinked", I would regard it as a potentially devastating misstep for him and for Russia, let alone for Ukraine.
Yanukovych, too, was conciliatory, accommodating and willing to negotiate with the rebels and the protesters who were in the process of destroying his regime. He ultimately agreed to practically all their demands. The problem -- he realized too late -- was that the rebels demanded more and ever more and would not agree with Yanukovych. In the end, it meant that his government could not be sustained and collapsed. Yanukovych had to flee for his life, and Ukraine has been riven with strife ever since.
Surely Putin understands this and how his own government in the Kremlin could be vulnerable to a similar dynamic. It strikes me as odd that he might follow the same course as Yanukovych. And yet, with these apparently conciliatory gestures, after so much death and destruction by the Kiev coup-regime already, he may be setting his government up for a similar fall, and he may indeed be laying the foundation for the ultimate goal of the EU/NATO/US axis: the dismantlement of the Russian Federation.
Why would he do that?
It's too soon to know what's really going on, but at the moment, this particular step doesn't feel very positive...
These are extraordinary developments if true.
The main story on the matter that I've read so far is this one in the New York Times (I know, I know...)
Putin Announces Pullback from Ukraine Border
[An excerpt:]
Mr. Putin said he wanted the authorities in Kiev to immediately halt all military actions in southeastern Ukraine, referring to them again as “punitive operations.” He also welcomed the release of militants the Ukrainians had been holding, particularly Pavel Gubarev, a “people’s governor” in Donetsk who had been detained by the Ukrainian security services.
“We think the most important thing now is to launch direct dialogue, genuine, full-fledged dialogue between the Kiev authorities and representatives of southeast Ukraine,” he said, standing next to Didier Burkhalter, the president of Switzerland and the chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is coordinating the mediation effort.
“This dialogue could give people from southeast Ukraine the chance to see that their lawful rights in Ukraine really will be guaranteed,” he said. Mr. Putin also left the door open to Russia accepting, under certain conditions, the May 25 presidential elections, which Moscow had previously rejected.
“Let me stress that the presidential election the Kiev authorities plan to hold is a step in the right direction, but it will not solve anything unless all of Ukraine’s people first understand how their rights will be guaranteed once the election has taken place,” Mr. Putin said.Mr. Putin was basically demanding that the mediation achieve what Russia has been seeking since the rebellion in Kiev overthrew Ukraine’s leader and Moscow’s ally, President Viktor F. Yanukovych, on Feb. 28: that Kiev grant some level of autonomy to the regions, including electing their own governors and directing their own foreign policy with their immediate neighbors.
Such a change would allow Russia some measure of control over the future direction of Ukraine and a possible veto over Ukraine’s attempts to join the European Union, or worse from Russia’s viewpoint, NATO.
“We all want the crisis to end as soon as possible, and in such a way that takes into account the interests of all people in Ukraine no matter where they live,” said Mr. Putin, according to the official Kremlin transcript of his remarks.
Putin has consistently behaved like the firm but ultimately conciliatory adult in the room during the Ukrainian upheavals that commenced when ousted president Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign a partnership agreement with the EU in November of last year.
While the coup-regime in Kiev has become more and more brutal and authoritarian toward resistance among Russians and Russian speakers, particularly in the East and South of the fragmenting nation, indeed launching military operations against refusniks and rebels in the East and precipitating a horrific massacre of civilians in Odessa, the Russian Federation president has been remarkably calm and deliberate in his arguments and actions, despite the increasingly shrill and bellicose rhetoric out of Kiev, Brussels, Berlin, London, and especially Washington, DC.
If indeed Putin has "blinked", I would regard it as a potentially devastating misstep for him and for Russia, let alone for Ukraine.
Yanukovych, too, was conciliatory, accommodating and willing to negotiate with the rebels and the protesters who were in the process of destroying his regime. He ultimately agreed to practically all their demands. The problem -- he realized too late -- was that the rebels demanded more and ever more and would not agree with Yanukovych. In the end, it meant that his government could not be sustained and collapsed. Yanukovych had to flee for his life, and Ukraine has been riven with strife ever since.
Surely Putin understands this and how his own government in the Kremlin could be vulnerable to a similar dynamic. It strikes me as odd that he might follow the same course as Yanukovych. And yet, with these apparently conciliatory gestures, after so much death and destruction by the Kiev coup-regime already, he may be setting his government up for a similar fall, and he may indeed be laying the foundation for the ultimate goal of the EU/NATO/US axis: the dismantlement of the Russian Federation.
Why would he do that?
It's too soon to know what's really going on, but at the moment, this particular step doesn't feel very positive...
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..."
--------------------------------------------------------------
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.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
The Travesty of the Cecily McMillan Trial
Well, who'd a thunk it?
Yesterday in the august Manhattan courtroom of Judge Ronald Zweibel a jury of six women duly convicted Cecily McMillan of assault in the second degree for her alleged unprovoked attack on Honest and Brave NYPD officer Grantley Bovell, an assault that left the Poor, Beleaguered Officer injured in one -- or perhaps the other -- eye, and mortified him severely.
The trial was one of those farces that routinely passes for "justice" in this country, in which testimony and evidence was not allowed for the defense, but no corroboration was necessary for the police officer's assertions. According to those present, his bald-faced lies and contradictions were accepted by the court as gospel.
Well, too often, this is how it goes in the fraudulent institution that claims to be the "finest justice system in the world." The subjects are railroaded and convicted of things they haven't done -- or are induced to plead guilty to things they haven't done -- every single day, as a matter of routine practice. It's not even the pretense of justice, it's a fraud up and down the line, and it is a fraud that condemns millions to jail and prison, sometimes for very lengthy terms, sometimes indeed to death, with little or no recourse. Once "in the system" there's almost no way out.
Cecily was badly injured in the take down and arrest on March 17, 2012. She suffered bruises and a cracked rib, and she had a series of panic attacks which caused her to hyperventilate and ultimately put her in seizure while she was trussed up with zip ties awaiting transport. She was not attended by medical personnel -- in fact, the police openly refused to allow her to be attended -- until many minutes after she began to have a seizure, and the prosecution claimed at trial (without evidence) that she was "faking".
"Faking."
That's the word for the whole dismal process she's been subjected to for the last two years. "Fake" in every way, from her arrest to the charges against her, to the farce of a trial which convicted her.
Cecily McMillan, like millions of others, was railroaded, charged and convicted of the crime of "assault" -- which in fact was what Brave and Valiant Officer Bovell did to her. He assaulted her, first by grabbing her, then by groping her breast, then by tackling her and pinning her to the ground, then by trussing her up and throwing her into a group of other detainees, then he and other officers further assaulted her by refusing to provide any sort of medical assistance when she complained of being unable to breathe and went into seizure.
"Violent bastards," indeed. It's an identity thing with these people.
Cecily McMillan was convicted of assault in the second degree on a police officer and was immediately remanded to Riker's Island without bail to await sentencing on May 19. She may well be sentenced by his phony honor Zweibel to the maximum of seven years for the insult and mortification -- and injury to one or the other eye -- she inflicted on Brave and Honest Officer Bovell that night in Zuccotti Park on St. Paddy's Day two years ago.
She doesn't deny she smacked him with her elbow, oh no. She never did deny that. What she said was she didn't know who he was, she didn't even see him as he came up behind her, and grabbed her from behind. He didn't identify himself. He was not in uniform. She started to leave the park on her own, she said, to get away from this person, when he grabbed right breast, hard, leaving a bruise, and she whacked him with her elbow.
At which point Brave and Valiant Officer Bovell tackled the bitch and sat on her until she was zip tied and under... control. Yeah, that's the ticket.
This is the scene as it was recorded by Cecily's friends that night:
Is it possible for a viewer of this video to make out what happened?
To an extent, perhaps.
It's possible to hear women speaking. "Ah, there's Cecily.... Is she getting beat up? She's getting beat up right now... Oh God... Yeah, they're [unintelligible]... Who is [escorting... or hurting] her? Cops and one guy not in a cop uniform, he's right be...[cut off]..."
But what can be seen is... ambiguous. I recall watching livestreaming of the Zuccotti Park re-occupation that night, and I recall the astonishment and outrage at what took place when Cecily was assaulted, manhandled and arrested, and the growing fury and outrage as she was neglected and refused medical attention as she had trouble breathing and went into seizure. I will never forget it.
What happened to Cecily happened so quickly, no one initially knew what was going on. It was almost unbelieveable, as up to that point, there had been very little interaction between police and the Occupiers, and the mass arrests hadn't begun. The spirit of the place was, until that moment, still pretty mellow.
But then, the woman was tackled by... someone. Nobody knew who or why, and it looked for all the world like she was being assaulted and beat up by a civilian stranger -- remember, Bovell was not in uniform -- only whoever it was tackling her and beating on her was being protected by cops... Ah. There you have it. Her attacker was plainclothes.
She was being arrested.
Here she is, trussed up, lying in the street, having a seizure, while a whole contingent of New York's Finest mill about, apparently enjoying the show, and the crowd of witnesses can barely contain their anger and dismay.
Typical, though, of the efforts of NYPD to display as much of their arbitrary cruelty to the multitudes as possible during the Occupy hey day. They did it all the time, as I documented in the cases of Daniel Murphy and "Romania" among others.
But of course, Cecily would be charged, would go to trial, and she would be convicted -- for what the officer had done.
Of course.
No surprise.
No justice.
It happens all the time, every day, to thousands who wind up "in the system" never to be free.
It's time it stops.
Another Police Killing in Albuquerque -- And the People Rise Up
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| Idyllic Nature, So Close to Texas, Yet So Far From God |
Over the weekend, tragedy stalked the mean streets of Albuquerque once again.
Well, it was a quiet street in a relatively new suburban enclave on the West Side, Ventana Ranch. It's not the kind of place where police shootings typically occur in Albuquerque, though it's not unknown for residential areas to erupt in gunfire.
Armand Martin was shot to death by a police sniper after a lengthy stand off with the police SWAT team at his home Saturday evening. His wife had called 911 earlier in the day when she said her husband had threatened her with a gun and she didn't feel safe. She left the home and sought shelter elsewhere while the police dealt with her diagnosed mentally ill husband by all their usual "negotiating tactics" -- including smoke grenades, tear gas, flash bangs, and snipers.
Some neighbors were appalled and disgusted. Others, of course, applauded the efforts of police to keep them safe.
The late Armand Martin was a retired Air Force colonel who had apparently not seen combat, but who had been diagnosed with mental health issues and was -- supposedly -- being treated for them at the VA hospital in town, where he was also apparently employed as an administrator. To the extent the story has been pieced together, at any rate, he was apparently subject to periodic crises, including suicidal crises, though he wasn't reputed to be particularly violent when in crisis. What his treatment consisted of is not known at this point, though he is said to have been taking medication for depression.
The dead man is said to have barricaded himself in his home after his wife and children left for safety elsewhere. He called KOB, one of the local television stations, during the time he was under the guns of the police SWAT detail, about two hours before he was killed, and told them he had had a fight with his wife, that he'd closed all the curtains and had weapons. "He also claimed the police were going to shoot him," KOB's spokesperson said.
Well, he was right about that. The police inexplicably ordered KOB to stop talking to Martin. According to the La Jicarita news site:
A man identifying himself as Martin’s brother Tommy called KOB later saying “My brother has told me too many bad things about police shooting people down there. I don’t know, right now I’m scared for my brother to go outside.” In addition he told KOB that his brother had guns but he didn’t think his brother knew where to find ammunition.Yes, well. Wouldn't that be the case, then?
We should understand that the some of the aspects of the Wild West still pertain to these parts, and many New Mexicans are gun-crazy. Citizens have guns in abundance, and they are sometimes equipped with side arms when they go to town; I think practically all of our neighbors are armed, and for it is claimed that no one lives in the country without "personal protection." They have guns in their homes, long guns, automatics, pistols, what have you. They keep guns in their vehicles. Of course, that means criminals are armed, too. And so are the police.
With all these guns in evidence, everywhere, it's probably a wonder that there are fewer shootings and shoot outs than there are. At least in the Wild West of yore, sheriffs knew that the plethora of guns themselves were a big part of the problem, and getting control of civilian weaponry was part of the process of "taming" the Wild West. I'm not sure that such "taming" ever happened here.
At any rate, Martin's brother wasn't sure that Martin had access to ammunition, which, if true, would make the guns he had at his home more symbolic -- and symptomatic -- weaponry than actual lethal weapons, no?
The police have made a lot of unsupported claims about the "shootout" with Martin on Saturday, including their belief that he fired at police before they shot him dead at the front entrance to his home.
There are no witnesses who will confirm that it is so. According to La Jicarita:
There were no eyewitnesses to confirm that Martin fired at APD. One eyewitness told the press he thought Martin was pointing the gun at himself. Police initially lied to neighbors, telling them that SWAT didn’t shoot Martin but rather took him into custody.Oh, right, about that dead man? Just a misunderstanding.
The police claim they will release lapel camera footage today to confirm their version of the facts. Everyone is waiting with bated breath.
The police claim they sent a crisis intervention team to negotiate with Martin before they shot him dead.
According to La Jicarita:
An APD spokesperson said APD used crisis intervention teams and negotiators, but according to neighbors and eyewitnesses, that negotiation included shouting over loudspeakers, firing flashbang grenades into windows, swarming armed military-equiped officers throughout the neighborhood for hours and placing a sniper on one neighbor’s roof.Typical.
No one believes the police. They lie routinely. And when they engage in "shootouts" with suspects, they lie about those encounters as a matter of honor and pride, or so it seems. I cannot count the number of times they have claimed this or that "fact" about a shootout or a suspect who's been shot dead that later turns out to be... false.
La Jicarita further reported:
In its press statement, APD did not report that Martin exited the house only after a SWAT grenade attack. Neighbors reported that APD fired three flashbang grenades into the house just prior to 6:16 PM. One neighbor told a La Jicarita reporter: “They were all camped out there. That’s what we saw for hours on end. It was military-style. Oh, and the flashbangs that were going off. It was scary. We went up into my neighbor’s house and we saw the flashbangs, they blew out all the windows.”
Yes, so typical.
Since the release of the scathing DoJ report criticizing APD for unwarranted use of force, unconstitutional policing and manifest institutional and systemic failures, it appears that they have actually increased their rate of killing, almost as an act of defiance, to demonstrate their ultimate power or something.
So:
 |
| ¡No F-ing Más! |
Last night, after a series of strategy meetings, the people who have been protesting the use of lethal force by police had had enough and they took action. They went down to City Hall, assembled in the City Council chambers, and shut the City Council meeting down. They then created a "People's Council" which passed resolutions condemning the recent spate of officer involved shootings and calling for the arrest of the Police Chief and the removal of the Mayor.
The police chief and his body guards skittered away before the "people's arrest warrant" could be served on him, and the Mayor (of course) was not in attendance. He never attends. He doesn't believe it's his job. The Councilors expressed frustration, not with the police but with the crowd who took over, and a statement was issued by the Chief's Office to the effect that such actions by the public are "not helpful."
What's "not helpful" is the constant and statistically increasing gunfire from police. Putting a stop to it, apparently by whatever means necessary, is now the public objective. The public has no confidence that the police are capable of reforming themselves, whether they are under DoJ supervision or not.
The fact that the shootings continue unabated -- in fact, at an increasing rate since the shooting of James Boyd in the Sandia foothills on March 16 which precipitated the latest round of protest actions -- despite the DoJ's clear and unambiguous statements about the unjustified use of force by APD is seen as simply a defiant slap in the face to the public and the Department of Justice by an out of control, militarized, and deeply dysfunctional police department.
This has to stop. CEASE FIRE!
The people will not sit down, the people will not shut up, and the people will not tolerate the continued death and defiance by the APD.
The people have demonstrated that they can essentially shut down the city, pretty much whenever they want to. The Powers That Be continue to spin their wheels while people are dying in their midst, shot to death by the APD, which those same Powers appear to have no control over whatever.
Armand Martin, like so many others who've been killed by the APD, should not have died by police gunfire like he did. On the other hand, he probably shouldn't have had weapons at his disposal, he should have had accessible and effective treatment for his mental health issues, and if his wife and children felt threatened by his behavior, they should have had accessible alternatives to calling 911 for assistance, since the 911 protocols require sending SWAT teams and extensive police firepower any time callers report being threatened with a gun.
The fact is, there are too few alternatives available to citizens in crisis, there are too few alternatives available to police, and the civic power structure, such as it is, doesn't really give a shit. They'll keep on keeping on just as long as they can, but the signs the signs are they can't for very much longer.
Too many forces are marshaling against the status quo.
Too many have died, too much blood has been spilled, too many incidents have been swept away, too many lies, too many protests, too many distractions.
The people of Albuquerque have had enough.
(h/t LeMoyne at FDL)
Monday, May 5, 2014
Ukraine Stories of Mayhem and Martyrdom -- and the Predominance of Propaganda
The stories coming out of Odessa yesterday, about what had happened the day before, when mayhem ruled the streets, and dozens and dozens were killed in street fighting and burned alive at the Trade Union building were almost beyond comprehension. Not much of it is in English, and much of what is in English follows one or another party line, none of which are necessarily truthful but are meant to inflame passions even further, and sell a particular belief about it all.
I watched a good deal of the coverage on Vremya Odessa, via UStream, during the uproar and its aftermath. While the station appears to be "pro-Kiev", at least its reporters were on the ground, covering events extensively and live, as well as posting compilation videos of the mayhem in the streets and at the Trade Union building. As far as I can tell, though "pro-Kiev," most of Vremya Odessa's reporting is in Russian rather than Ukrainian, and something I read along the way suggested that Russian was the most common language spoken in Odessa. (Note: when I interviewed Ukrainian survivors of the Great Patriotic War in California some years ago, their language of choice was Russian, and the translator translated from Russian to English and vice versa, though the translator and the interviewee would occasionally converse with one another in Ukrainian.) I've described my familiarity with Russian as "spotty" at best. I can pick out words spoken or written but I can't follow a conversation or read complete sentences in Russian, and Ukrainian is practically an unknown territory for me.
I also followed the eyewitness reports in English from Howard Amos on Twitter and his summaries at the Guardian. For news on what's been happening in the Eastern Sector where Ukrainian military operations are apparently under way -- or not -- I've largely looked to Graham Phillips' eyewitness accounts on his Twitter and his video reports on YouTube and for RT.
These are all eyewitness reports, mostly without analysis, and if they are in the Russian or Ukrainian language, I can only barely follow bits of dialogue. Initially, I thought the language barrier would be too difficult to overcome, but I'm finding it to be something of a benefit because I can concentrate more easily on what the visuals show rather than focus on what people are saying they show. I'm aware that the videos -- whether live or recorded -- only show a slice of the whole. I found out how the slice-nature of video can sometimes be a distortion during Occupy when I was often juggling several livestreams simultaneously. The camera can only show bits and pieces of the whole at any given time, and the bits it does show can be both illuminating and distorting. It's best to see and utilize a number of points of view -- which may mean that a full picture of events has to wait for several days or months as the compilations are available and assembled.
I scan other reports, but generally I don't rely on the veracity on much of anything that isn't based directly on eyewitness reporting.
I've gone into this rather lengthy description of how I've been gathering information about what's going on in Ukraine in part because so much of the "news" about it in the West is false and almost entirely propaganda on behalf of the coup-regime in Kiev and its sponsors in Brussels, Berlin, London, and Washington, DC. The propagandists have no interest whatever in the people being squeezed by the great powers in their efforts to control Ukraine. They have no interest in the truth, either. Their sole interest is in marketing a version of their political and economic demands and desires that will convince a significant portion of the public to buy it.
Counter-propaganda is coming out of Russia and the Eastern Sectors of Ukraine, much of it just as false and based in marketing beliefs as the propaganda of the West.
The only reliable news I've found is the on-the-ground eyewitness stuff that is available -- preferably raw, live, and unedited -- but which still must be seen and evaluated skeptically. There are so many lies, so very little truth.
The video at the head of this post is an edited compilation of scenes on May 2, taken from above and in front of the Trade Union building in Odessa just prior to and during the attack on it by anti-Russian hooligans, an attack in which the encampment in front of the building was burned, and the building itself was firebombed by Molotov cocktails. Dozens were killed. I had seen some live video of the scene during and after the assault from the Vremya Odessa livestream, but of course that video was taken on the ground and later inside the building after the fires were put out, so an overall picture was hard to gain.
Western media for the most part has not been able or willing to report honestly or accurately on what happened there, in part because all reports from Ukraine must be fit into a pre-digested narrative that matches the propaganda of the various Western and Ukrainian capitals involved in the matter. That means that what happened must be made to fit a narrative of "pro-Russian" vs "pro-Ukrainian" actions. Whatever doesn't fit the narrative is eliminated. The "pro-Russian" actions must be characterized as The Bad, whereas the "pro-Ukrainian" actions must be reported as "sadly necessary responses" to The Bad.
The more I learn about what happened in Odessa -- and the reaction of Odessans to what happened -- the less it fits the current Western propaganda narratives, and it doesn't really fit the Russian propaganda narrative, either.
It was something out of nowhere that shocked and appalled Odessans, really seemed to shake them to their core. Nothing like this fit Odessans' social and cultural ideas about themselves.
How the fires in the building started is still a "controversial matter" according to the Western propaganda, that is when the fires aren't being blamed directly on "pro-Russian" protesters. From the video above, and from some of the video I saw on Vremya Odessa (their later compilations, not live) it was obvious that the building was being firebombed from outside by Molotov cocktails. This should not be a matter of controversy or dispute. It's obvious.
Not only were firebombs being lobbed at and into the building, people who were trying to escape the fires were also being firebombed by members of the mob outside.
What a horrible nightmare.
In the video above, a relatively small group of people is seen at the front entrance to the building, behind some makeshift barricades assembled on the front steps. They had apparently already abandoned their encampment in the square outside. A much larger group is seen running toward the building and the encampment. They are seen destroying and burning the encampment while those at the front entrance watch. Some time later, the people in the mob outside the building run away from the burning encampment, as if, perhaps, responding to gunfire. There were repeated reports of guns fired from the building at the mob outside resulting in several deaths and injuries. Since I saw apparently dead bodies lying in the street outside the building in the Vremya Odessa livestream, I thought the reports of gunfire from the building were reasonably creditable.
Not long after the mob runs away, though, they return. The "pro-Russian" protesters who had been on the front steps have apparently retreated inside, and only members of the mob are seen in front of the building and on the steps.
A fire is already burning inside the building on the third floor, and Molotov cocktails are being tossed by the mob at the front entrance to the building. One Molotov cocktail seems to be tossed from inside the building, and it appears to fall ineffectively on the front steps. This may actually have been one that was tossed at the building from the mob outside, but there's no way to tell from the video itself.
Shortly, the front entrance is aflame, and there is heavy flame coming from windows to the right. More Molotov cocktails are tossed at the building, and members of the mob are seen approaching the front of the building and motioning to their comrades to come along. Some people dressed in black, some of them armed with clubs or bats, are seen on the roof. Who these people on the roof actually are has been subject to some dispute, as access to the roof was said not to be available to those inside, which was said to be one reason why so many died.
More Molotov cocktails are seen being tossed at and into the building from the crowd outside, and the building is enveloped in smoke. Some time later, a column of police with shields is seen marching toward the buildings through the crowd in front. Prior to this point, there had been no sign of police at all, nor had fire brigades arrived.
But a firetruck eventually does arrive and begins to spray water on the front entrance while the crowd outside mills about. Eventually, the fires at the front entrance are put out, though flames can still be seen inside the building. A couple of people dressed in black can be seen on the roof.
That video ends without showing any attempts at escape from the burning building or any attempts at rescuing those inside.
Some of those who managed to escape were savagely beaten -- this was shown live on Vremya Odessa (which apparently does not archive its livestreams) -- others were attacked with more Molotov cocktails, and essentially everyone who got out alive was jailed.
Initial reports were that most of those who died inside died from smoke inhalation. That may be, but many of the videos and images of the dead inside show horribly burned corpses, sometimes in areas where there appeared to have been no fire. Vremya Odessa sent a reporter and cameraman inside after the fires were extinguished, and they showed and described much destruction, but there was only one dead body on a stair landing in their live video. It was apparently not burned. Where the many burned bodies were in relation to the video shot by Vremya Odessa is unknown, though some, apparently, were very close to the front entrance.
I'm unaware of any Western media or government that has condemned the actions of the mob at the Trade Union building in Odessa, though, of course they have issued their routine announcements "deploring" and expressing "sadness" that "anyone" died.
I've seen occasional efforts to blame the victims for their own fate, simply because they were where they were, and unfortunately "shit happens." They should have been somewhere else. There have been attempts to justify the mob's behavior by pointing out that they were being shot at by people inside or on top of the building. Yet who was shooting is not entirely clear. Howard Amos said he definitely heard gunshots fired from the building, and he saw dead bodies (I believe he said seven) in the street, but who was shooting is still unknown. There is video of a man in the crowd firing his gun at the building.
Molotov cocktails were being thrown at the building before the crowd runs away in the video above, and the encampment was being destroyed at the same time.
There were religious services and memorials for the dead throughout the day yesterday, and there really seemed to be a level of shock and horror among the people at what had happened, far more than there was anger, although there was plenty of anger. The police formed a cordon around the entrance of the building, but many people left floral tributes to the dead. I read that eventually the police dispersed and the people were allowed in the building, but I didn't see it.
Later yesterday evening, a mob of several thousand mostly young men formed in the center of town. They listened to speeches and were demagogued by Right Sektor toughs who tried to incite them to more violence. Many were armed with clubs, bats and chains. They marched through the city, singing and chanting, first to the police headquarters where they listened to speeches and confronted the newly appointed police chief, then to the Trade Union building where they were again harangued and incited to violence by Right Sektor thugs.
But surprisingly -- or perhaps not -- a delegation of young men from the mob linked arms and formed a cordon around the floral tributes to the dead, protecting them from the mob, and those who were trying to incite the mob to more violence were ultimately not successful.
Vremya Odessa stopped covering the action at about the time the mob was ready to disperse, so I didn't see what happened subsequently. Today, they're showing mostly movies and documentaries. I haven't seen any live coverage.
But I have looked at some of the videos that have been posted of the events of May 2 in Odessa, and I have read some of the recently posted descriptions of what people witnessed.
No matter one's point of view or political perspective, what happened in Odessa was horrible. Whether it was instigated from outside or was spontaneous hardly matters at this point. There have been persistent reports that Right Sektor thugs were bused in from Kiev to essentially raise havoc. While that may be true -- or it may not be -- the mob and its behavior were the product of local animus, fired up, no doubt, by the propaganda out of Kiev, and perhaps instigated by Right Sektor demagoguery, but by no means was it entirely a matter of outside influence.
Mindless mobs can be terrible things, and once incited, they cannot be easily controlled. It was clear enough from the live video I saw were truly shocked and horrified at what they were witnessing and what they were a part of. Many of those in the mob outside the Trade Union building took it upon themselves to improvise means of getting people out of the building, and others attempted to rescue the injured who fell from the windows. At the same time, members of the mob continued throwing Molotov cocktails at the building and some of them beat the injured on the ground. There are reports that people who had barely escaped the burning building with their lives were subsequently beaten or stabbed to death by members of the mob; and it appears that everyone who escaped the building and the mob alive was subsequently jailed.
But yesterday a crowd assembled at the jail and demanded the release of those who were jailed after escaping the Trade Union building alive. This action -- unlike the action at the Trade Union the day and night before -- was almost universally characterized by Western media as a "mob" action. Those who demanded freedom for their comrades who had escaped the inferno have been labeled a "mob" while those who firebombed the Trade Union building were gently described as "pro-Ukraine" demonstrators.
This level of propaganda is almost unprecedented in the West. Even during the World Wars and the Cold War, such manipulation of language and facts and reality by Western governments and media acting in concert with one another was not this duplicitous and overtly false. The recent example that comes closest to the current level of Western propaganda being spewed by governments and media alike was that surrounding the invasion of Iraq.
And like that situation, the propaganda from the other side -- in this case Russia -- is almost truthful by contrast to the tissue of lies coming out of Western governments and media. The Iraqis found out, of course, that their truth could not save them. The question now is whether the Russians and their allies in Ukraine will find out the same.
What I've noticed about so many of the so-called "pro-Russian" factions in Ukraine -- and it was certainly true of those who sought shelter at the Odessa Trade Union building as well -- is that they tend to be older, whereas the "pro-Maidan" activists, especially the armed marchers who take over the streets at night, sometimes in torchlight parades, tend to be younger, often much younger.
This indicates to me that there is a significant -- and deliberately engineered -- generational divide at work in Ukraine, one that was cynically developed through the efforts of those hundreds of NGOs, most funded by the US and EU, who have been tirelessly working to "educate" the young people of Ukraine to "love Europe" and loathe Russia.
It's paying off.
Ukrainians will not soon forget the searing scenes of mayhem and martyrdom in Odessa. The question is how they will be remembered.
The Euromaidan television operation (funded by NGOs, funded by US and EU interests) consciously tried to emulate revolutionary visuals from the Soviet past. They produced some stunning images during the revolt in Kiev. Those images will stay with the participants, witnesses and viewers for a long time to come. Nothing like that took place in Odessa during the recent unpleasantness, and all of the imagery I've seen so far is ugly, disturbing, and alienating. I don't see Russia or the "pro-Russia" factions in Ukraine producing any kind of martyrdom-slash-revolutionary visuals from these recent events, not yet anyway.
Part of that, I think, is because the Russians aren't the Revolutionaries here; they represent the status quo, the status quo ante, of course, but still, not a forward impulse. Under the circumstances, and given the extraordinary level of unity on the side of Revolt and Revolution, and given the surprising level of flexibility being shown by the rebels, I'm not at all sure that the status quo can be restored or maintained.
My sense of these events is that Ukraine will never be allowed to be the same again.
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UPDATE: A couple of videos have come my way which expand on the one posted above. The first is a 24 minute video of action around the Trade Union building from a time shortly after the encampment was set ablaze until shortly after a number of badly injured and/or burned men are pulled away from the back of the building after a huge and intense fire burns above the back entrance. How that fire started isn't shown in the video, and its intensity is quite different than that of most of the other fires that burned in the building that day. Only the fires at the front entrance seemed to match the intensity of fire that is seen in this video. Also seen is a man with an automatic pistol firing into the building from the mob. There are many other surprising or disgusting elements in this video, including some mention of "Pravyi Sektor" and, if you know what to look for, some fleeting glimpses of men in camo get ups who quite likely are the Pravyi Sektor members to which the videographer refers. The video is titled (in Russian) "These are my people?" and subtitled, "They are happy when burned people jump out of windows." Be warned, this is not a steadi-cam video, and the videographer tends to point the camera at the ground or wave it somewhat randomly. As difficult as some of the visuals are to watch, the camera work is sometimes even more difficult.
The following video -- which I'll link to but not embed -- was taken inside the building after the fires were put out. There are many burned bodies -- and if you would rather not see such graphic video of burned bodies, please don't watch. One of the links in the earlier text shows some stills from this video. As far as I can tell, the majority of the bodies are found on stair landings where the most intense fires were burning at the back of the building, and from where the injured in the previous video appear to have jumped. As I say, I don't know what caused this fire or how it started, but as I pointed out to a correspondent, many years ago I was engulfed in a gasoline fire, much like one that would be caused by a Molotov cocktail, and I survived pretty badly singed but otherwise unscathed. The fire burned itself out fairly quickly, and despite a great deal of smoke and flame, never got all that hot.
Whatever caused the fire which burned these people, I doubt it was a Molotov cocktail.
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