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What PCR says is, essentialy, confirmed by this NYT report. The fascist smell of the nucleus of "revolutionary" forces is hard to hide. How is Russia deemed to follow intervention in Ukraine is hard to see.
Direct, massive military intervention I don't se probable.
All in all the future seems in accord with "chaos theory" which guides foreign political Washington action. Not friendly governments have to be overthrown even is the result is failed states with consequent suffering for the peoples. Lybia is a case study of this. Converts Join With Militants in Kiev Clash
KIEV, Ukraine — As the center of the Ukrainian capital tipped into a maelstrom of gunfire and blood on Thursday, a man wearing a helmet stood on a street corner near Independence Square, the epicenter of the violence, holding a leaf of printer paper.
“Guys,” he called out, “we are forming a new hundred. Please sign up.”
Anton Chontorog, 23, a computer programmer, joined a small crowd of young men who lined up to enroll in the hundred, the basic organizing unit of a strikingly resilient force that is providing the tip of the spear in the violent showdown with government security forces. The sotni, as the units are called, take their name from a traditional form of Cossack cavalry division. Activists estimate at least 32 such groups are in Kiev now, with more forming all the time.
Mr. Chontorog said that he had been in the square many times as a protester, but that after the violence on Thursday wanted to commit himself to the fight, which meant following orders from the commander of his hundred. “A volunteer just shows up to help,” he said. “The difference is that a member of a hundred has obligations.” Across Kiev and beyond, personal barriers that once defined the limits of behavior are crumbling, pushing this fractured but, until a few weeks ago, proudly peaceful nation into a spiral of chaos.
The Ukrainian authorities and their allies in the Kremlin identify the source of the increase in violence as extremists and terrorists, the young militants of sometimes sinister, far-right political affiliations with ideologies formed in the struggle against Polish and Soviet domination. They have provided much of the front-line muscle in increasingly bloody clashes with the police.
But there are thousands of other protesters who, like Mr. Chontorog, are late converts to militancy, who say they believe that the government has left them with no other choice by deploying so much lethal violence itself. On Thursday, a few antigovernment protesters could be seen carrying weapons. But with reports that the police have killed more than 70 demonstrators, most of the gunfire clearly came from the other side of the barricades. The interior minister reported that 29 police officers had been taken to the hospital and 67 had been captured by the protesters.
Nonetheless, the murky nature of the opposition gathered in Independence Square, at least on its fringes, is causing problems for the United States and the European Union, which would prefer a neat apposition of peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrators versus the thuggish kleptocracy of President Viktor F. Yanukovych. But that line of thinking often blurs in the streets.
The ambiguity was captured on Thursday by a 25-year-old man wearing a mask who, after a victorious battle on Khreshchatyk Street in Kiev that morning, gave a blunt summary of his cause: “Nationalism is what I believe in,” said the man, who gave his name only as Nikolo. “The nation is my religion.”
Since the protests began in November, after Mr. Yanukovych spurned a trade and political deal with the European Union, Nikolo has traveled six times from his home in the western city of Lviv to hurl firebombs and rocks, and to prove a belligerent point that violence works.
“What have humanism and pacifism ever brought to any nation?” he asked, clutching a battered metal shield and a metal rod, his soot-blackened face covered by a brown balaclava. “Revolutions are violent.” Play Video
Video|3:16
Reuters
The Ukraine Divide, Explained
Ukraine is being pulled in different directions: one toward Russia, the other toward Western Europe. Young militants like Mr. Chontorog and Nikolo are by no means the only presence on the streets. More typical, perhaps, is the 33-year-old manager of an American telephone company here who on Thursday drove his blue family car to the barricades and casually unloaded shopping bags filled with empty glass bottles to help replenish the protest movement’s supply of firebombs.
“A week or even a few days ago, I would never have seen myself doing this,” said the well-dressed manager, who gave only his first name, Viktor, a supporter from the start of what began three months ago as a peaceful and often joyous revolt against Mr. Yanukovych. “Now, I am ready to bring not just bottles but also gasoline.”
He added, in a commonly expressed sentiment: “Of course I don’t like violence. What is happening is very sad. But violence is just a response to violence on the other side.”
But while the ranks of the protesters are diverse, the young men like Nikolo are the foot soldiers in a deepening civil conflict, the steel that refuses to bend under the pressure of thousands of riot police officers, volleys of live ammunition, snipers on rooftops and the looming threat of martial law.
They are heirs to a nationalist tradition that traces its roots to Stepan Bandera and the fanatical nationalists of western Ukraine who violently opposed their Polish and Soviet overlords in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s before finally being subdued.
The sotni provide a quasi-military discipline to the opposition’s street muscle. The commanders of the hundreds meet with other leaders of bands of young men under the umbrella of the Maidan Self Defense organization, which is led by Andri Parubi, a member of the opposition party Fatherland, though his control over some of the right-wing street groups appears tenuous at times.
In addition to the hundreds, several other groups have fielded militarized bands of men. The Svoboda political party, the parliamentary wing of a broader western Ukrainian nationalist movement, has activists armed with clubs, chains and other bludgeons. Svoboda has at times clashed with another nationalist organization of mounting influence in the street politics called Right Sector, a coalition of a half-dozen hard-line nationalist groups that were once on the fringe, such as Patriots of Ukraine, Trident and White Hammer. The two organizations have also cooperated in occupying buildings and manning barricades.
They have also reached out far beyond just hard-core nationalists. Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of Right Sector, who is himself from eastern Ukraine, has proved a shrewd political operator fully aware that resistance on the street is not enough to oust Mr. Yanukovych. In a statement issued on Thursday, Mr. Yarosh appealed to Ukraine’s wealthiest businessmen, known as oligarchs, telling the widely despised billionaires that they “now have a chance to change people’s attitudes by switching to their side in order to stop the bloodshed.”
But if these groups, whose members are far outnumbered by nonviolent protesters and also by the police, were the only ones driving Ukraine’s opposition to Mr. Yanukovych, the president could easily have defeated them weeks ago. Behind them stands a mass of others who recoil at pugnacious nationalism and scenes of mayhem but who now stand shoulder to shoulder with outfits like Right Sector, enraged that security forces resorted to violence to crack down on what had been a mostly peaceful protest in the mold of the Orange Revolution of 2004.
Since the beginning of this week’s mayhem in Kiev on Tuesday, about 600 people a day have signed up to go from Lviv to the capital to join the protesters, according to Oksana Medved, 22, a psychologist. She was among the volunteer workers at one of what she said were three centers for people here to register for rides to the capital by bus or car.
Many Ukrainians, who doggedly oppose the government, look with horror at the use of firebombs, rocks and, on occasion, guns to oust the president, who was democratically elected in 2010 and whose future is scheduled to be decided at the ballot box in 2015.
Revulsion is particularly strong in the east of the country, where Mr. Yanukovych first made his career in politics, where most people speak Russian rather than Ukrainian, and where Ukrainian nationalist heroes like Stepan Bandera are viewed as fascist traitors.
“We have a genetic memory of fascism here,” said Anatoly Skripnik, a businessman in the eastern city of Dnepropetrovsk.
Many protesters played down the role that the quasi-military nationalist groups, and history, are playing in the confrontation. “Some from the west are nationalists,” said Nikolai Visinski, an artist, standing on a barricade Thursday evening. “But we are all united in wanting a change of government. You don’t hear people yelling about Stepan Bandera. People just want to live in a free country.”
PCR just needs to STFU with his constant damn grand conspiracies. Everything that happens in this world can somehow be connected to a Washington conspiracy to him. If Obama takes a dump, it is surely because he is masterminding a plan to establish a dominion over another territory. Sometimes shit happens with or without any influence of Washington.
BRUSSELS — Thanks in part to the coordinated efforts of Germany, Poland, France and the United States, irrevocable change has finally come to Ukraine, with President Viktor F. Yanukovych’s flight from Kiev and Parliament’s vote to call for new elections in May.
But the powers still have urgent work to do. Ukraine could either descend into chaos or right itself on a path toward a new democratic stability. The European powers and the United States must offer the country all possible support to move toward the latter.
The first and most urgent step for Western leaders is to send unequivocal messages to Moscow that any support by Russia for the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine to break away from the rest of the country would be met harshly, and result in a general reconsideration of relations with Russia on all levels.
In parallel, they must make sure that their own resources, and those of the European Union institutions in Brussels, are available to political leaders in Kiev to assist them in their transition to a new regime.
Moreover, Ukraine’s crisis isn’t just political: The country faces economic default without support. It had been relying on Russia for that help, and now Europeans and Americans must quickly work with the International Monetary Fund to provide a financial lifeline to Kiev and to prepare longer-term economic-assistance programs; they must also be ready to give direct emergency aid by themselves, if needed.
Simply by announcing a readiness to commit to these steps, they would be providing enormous help to the forces committed to change in Ukraine.
Besides getting through the first days and weeks, there are two great political risks the West must help Ukraine to address. One is the inevitable attempt to undermine an emerging order. The protest movement that began last November, centered in Kiev’s Independence Square, has won. But it is quite possible that the forces that supported the former regime, especially in the east and south of the country, are going to contest the new order.
And it is questionable whether the Kremlin will accept a loss of influence in Ukraine. Mr. Putin had high hopes of making Ukraine a key ally in his planned Eurasian Union. He may have decided that Mr. Yanukovych was too unreliable an ally, but that does not mean he will accept a revolution against him. (Mr. Yanukovych, who reportedly fled to the eastern city of Kharkiv, near the border with Russia, said he had been forced to leave the capital because of an illegal “coup d’état.”)
The second risk is that the new regime will look like the one installed after the Orange Revolution in 2004: years of painful stalemate, political institutions blocking each other, permanent infighting and no clear separation between political and economic power.
It is primarily up to the Ukrainian people to put their still-young country on a new path. Many have demonstrated incredible courage over the last weeks. But a post-Yanukovych Ukraine will still be a fragile state with weak institutions.
Since it declared independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine has lived uncomfortably between the European Union and Russia. Despite some progress, it failed to build stable and trustworthy institutions. That’s why so much of the country has put its hopes in the European Union; Ukrainians saw that their neighbors who had joined it — Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia — were doing very well. All the bloc offered last year was an “association,” which does not include the promise of membership, and a free-trade agreement.
Because the offer was so weak, the door was open for Mr. Putin to sabotage it and for Mr. Yanukovych to reject it. Now the European Union needs to come back with a better offer — not just association, but membership.
Doing so would unleash a new dynamic. It would embolden a new leadership in Kiev and give them enough authority to push through painful but necessary economic and government reforms. A process of transformation would kick off. Urgently needed foreign investment would rush in. It would signal to the entire country that a better future is possible.
His successor, and Ms. Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, continued on that path. But Ms. Merkel, in office since 2005, has been reluctant to follow in their steps so far. Wary of Russian opposition and unwilling to press a more active foreign policy, Berlin in recent years has been reluctant to provide leadership in eastern Europe.
Ms. Merkel must now show courage and strategic competence. If Eastern Europe becomes unstable, Germany will be affected too — and deeply so. Only Berlin has the necessary weight and connections to bring all key players on board to make significant change possible.
Seen by many as the European Union’s leading power, Germany can bring France on board, a necessary condition for getting the bloc fully behind a new approach to Ukraine. Moreover, Berlin, with its strong economic ties with Moscow, is able to keep the West’s relations with Moscow on track. And Berlin pulls enough weight in Washington to put together a common trans-Atlantic strategy.
In the last weeks and days in Ukraine we saw how fast things can deteriorate in Eastern Europe. Germany and the European Union must significantly step up their engagement and be ready to take more risks. If Berlin does not take the lead, nobody else will.
Ulrich Speck, a foreign policy expert, is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, the European center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Western governments are jubilant over the fall of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, a Russian ally. They may be underestimating Vladimir Putin: Russia has the option to hasten Ukraine's slide into chaos and wait until the hapless European Union acquiesces to - if not begs for - Russian intervention.
That leaves the West with a limited number of choices. The first is to do nothing and watch the country spiral into chaos, with Russia as the eventual beneficiary. The second is to dig deep into its
pockets and find US$20 billion or more to buy near-term popularity for a pro-Western government - an unlikely outcome. The third, and the most realistic, is to steer Ukraine towards a constitutional referendum including the option of partition.
Judging from Russian press coverage, Moscow already has washed its hands of the feckless Yanukovich. Russia Today whimsically observed on February 22 that Yanukovich lacked the sangfroid of Mikhail Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia and an ally of the West:
Yanukovich could also have dispersed the protesters and maintained public order in the country, whatever criticism it might have brought. This is how the then Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, acted in 2007. He brutally suppressed a peaceful protest and called an early presidential election, which he won, instead of an early parliamentary election, which the opposition demanded and which his party could well have lost. Unlike the Georgian leader, Yanukovich hesitated even when the Ukrainian protest turned Kiev into a battlefield. [1]
Moscow has no need of allies with weak stomachs. But it will withdraw the offer of $15 billion worth of Ukrainian debt purchases and subsidies for natural gas exports to Ukraine and leave the nearly bankrupt country to the ministrations of the West. Careful what you wish for, Russia is telling the West.
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that Ukraine should get money from the International Monetary Fund: "We consider that such a situation would meet the interests of Ukraine, would put the country on the path toward major structural reforms. We wish them success in this undertaking and in the rapid stabilization of the political and social situation."
Siluanov is being mischievous. Twice in the past six years, the IMF suspended promised loans to Ukraine after the country refused to cut salaries and pensions and raise energy prices. Russia had offered a loan without conditions; any money the West offers will require austerity measures that no Ukrainian government is capable of enforcing.
The fall of Yanukovich is an embarrassment to Russia, and a well-deserved one, but that does not leave Russia entirely without options. Russia most likely will adopt the same stance towards pro-European Union politicians that the Egyptian military and its Saudi backers took toward Egypt's the Muslim Brotherhood: let the opposition take the blame for economic and social chaos, and then move in when the country is on its knees. The Brotherhood ruled Egypt for a year, and then the food and fuel ran out, 30 million Egyptians, more than half the country's adult population, demonstrated to oust it. The military obliged in August 2013 and immediately obtained emergency loans from the Saudis.
The IMF meanwhile offered Egypt small amounts of money in return for big cuts in government subsidies and got nowhere. It is possible, to be sure, that the European Union and Washington will cough up $15 billion for Ukraine, but this seems most unlikely given aversion of all their governments to further bailouts. As Walter Russell Mead put it, the West brought a baguette to a knife fight; the problem is that even the baguette comes with IMF conditionality. [2]
If the European Union had a vibrant economy, matters might be different. But Europe is barely showing vital signs after the Great Crash of 2008 and the Great European Recession of 2011-2012. Unemployment is stuck above 12%, and industrial production remains 15% below the pre-2008 peak.
Euro Area Unemployment Rate
Europe Industrial Production Index Source: European Central Bank
Europeans, moreover, are of two minds about prospective Ukrainian membership in the EU. Some European countries, notably the UK, already are fending off unwanted Eastern European immigrants from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. Germany's Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer came under fire in 2005 after critics claimed that his relaxation of visa requirements allowed a million Ukrainians into Germany, including large numbers of prostitutes and criminals. [3] With some justification, the Europeans suspect that the main reason that Ukrainians want EU membership is that they want to leave their country as quickly as possible.
In the industrialized, Russian-speaking eastern half of the country, EU membership is viewed skeptically. In most of Eastern Europe, Soviet-era heavy industry was closed but not replaced, leading to chronic unemployment. Ukraine's heavy industry may not be the world's most competitive, but it has steady business in Russia. The Ukraine's agricultural West never derived much economic benefit from the economic ties to Russia and understandably feels no loyalty to its former imperial occupier.
When the Europeans sup with Ukrainian leaders, they bring a long spoon. There are no knights in shining armor in Ukrainian politics. Former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, now free after being jailed when she lost by 2010 election to Yanukovych, is a problematic personality, to say the least. During the mid-1990s, in the Wild East free-for-all following the collapse of the Soviet Union, she became one of Ukraine's richest oligarchs.
The country also is a demographic deader. At its present fertility rate (1.3 children per female), its 47 million people will shrink to only 15 million by the end of the century. There are at present 11 million Ukrainian women aged 15 to 49 (although a very large number are working abroad); by the end of the century this will fall to just 2.8 million. There were 52 million Ukrainian citizens when Communism fell in 1989. Its GDP at about $157 billion is a fifth of Turkey's and half of Switzerland's.
Ukraine is barely a country, rather an amalgam of provinces left over from failed empires - Russian, Austrian, Lithuanian, Ottoman - cobbled together into a Soviet "republic" and cast adrift after the collapse of Communism. Lviv (Lemberg) was a German-speaking city, part of Austrian Silesia; before World War II a quarter of its people were Jews. Jews were two-fifths of the population of Odessa. A fifth of the population, mainly in the east, are ethnic Russians; a tenth, mainly in the west, are Uniate Catholics, who have a special place in Catholic policy since the papacy of John Paul II.
Ukrainian nationality is as dubious as Byelorussian nationality: neither of them had a dictionary of their language until 1918.
US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, whose "F*** the Europeans" remark on an outed tape recording earned her 15 minutes of fame recently, ought to be fired for being plain dumb. Europe will have to pay a good part of the bill for Ukraine's problems one way or the other. The United States Congress won't offer $15 billion to support Ukraine's foreign debt as Russia did last month.
Russia will not abandon Russian-speakers cut off from the Motherland by the collapse of the Soviet Union. One may assume that when local officials in Eastern Ukraine urge the local population to form militias, they may count on some professional assistance. [4] Time is on the side of whomever has the highest pain tolerance, and that is Russia, not the West.
Russia is trying to influence in it's former Soviet Union states. It had a pro Russian Ukrainian leader, but he appear deposed and the pro western elements are in control.
Readers should study Russia's horrible treatment of the Ukraine from 1928 to 1940.
"Collectivization especially targeted Ukraine, "the breadbasket of the Soviet Union," which clung stubbornly to its own national identity and preference for village-level communal landholdings. In 1932-33, Stalin engineered a famine (by massively raising the grain quota that the peasantry had to turn over to the state); this killed between six and seven million people and broke the back of Ukrainian resistance. The Ukrainian famine has only recently been recognized as one of the most destructive genocides of the twentieth century (see Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow, and the Web resources compiled by The Ukrainian Weekly)"
http://www.gendercide.org/case_stalin.html
The Ukraine is dependent on Russia for gas supplies, which complicates the desire for Ukraine to shift towards a pro European stance.
Meanwhile the protests against the repressive regime in Venezuela are increasing. The internet and word of mouth has increased the chances for open revolt against repressive governments.
Poor economic conditions in many parts of the globe have increased dissatisfaction with incumbent leaders.
Of course the U.S. and other western governments are stoking the flames of protest, both out of favoring democratic governments as well as their own interests. There is no surprise that the CIA might have some involvement.
However, few want to trust Russia based on past history.
Stalin killed millions of Russians and Ukrainians. But then the West tried to kill off the Soviet state and the food will always go to political friends before it goes to political enemies.
I'd also like to know how it applies to the German dominated EU? The German treatment of Ukraine between 1941 and 1945 was what exactly?
See these guys in the news anymore? No. That is because I go here and you go there ethnic cleansing works while Western style birthdays parties that invite Hatfield's , Capulet, McCoys' and Montagues don't.
Stalin killed millions of Russians and Ukrainians. But then the West tried to kill off the Soviet state and the food will always go to political friends before it goes to political enemies.
I'd also like to know how it applies to the German dominated EU? The German treatment of Ukraine between 1941 and 1945 was what exactly?
Probably as humane as it was with jews, gipsies, russians and all "inferior races"...except, maybe for the then german sepeaking population
Stalin killed millions of Russians and Ukrainians. But then the West tried to kill off the Soviet state and the food will always go to political friends before it goes to political enemies.
I'd also like to know how it applies to the German dominated EU? The German treatment of Ukraine between 1941 and 1945 was what exactly?
Good point. Except for the Ukrainian collaborators in the west, it was typical of the Nazi's treatment of Slavs everywhere. Brutal. Upwards of 8 mill dead, along with 500K Jews murdered by the SS.
PCR just needs to STFU with his constant damn grand conspiracies. Everything that happens in this world can somehow be connected to a Washington conspiracy to him. If Obama takes a dump, it is surely because he is masterminding a plan to establish a dominion over another territory. Sometimes shit happens with or without any influence of Washington.
BJ, every culture and society confronts facts which tend to be suppressed because of the social and psychological costs of not doing so. Similarly, there are political activities, practices and arrangements - deliberate or otherwise - which are usually repressed and tend to remain unacknowledged in polite discourse on either the right and the left. These are inevitably intertwined with intelligence, diplomatic and military activities.
I understand that it gets frustrating, but to deny that any of this happens is as defective a notion as the assertion that it happens everywhere and always. Look at the work of Anthony Sutton, for instance. Here's a good conservative gentleman and affiliated with the respectable Hoover Institution. He spent the better part of his professional career documenting these sub rosa events.
The wiki article on Sutton includes quotes from left and right establishment figures that say about as much:
Professor Richard Pipes, of Harvard, said in his book, Survival Is Not Enough: Soviet Realities and America's Future (Simon & Schuster;1984):
"In his three-volume detailed account of Soviet Purchases of Western Equipment and Technology ... Sutton comes to conclusions that are uncomfortable for many businessmen and economists. For this reason his work tends to be either dismissed out of hand as 'extreme' or, more often, simply ignored."
Me, I'm glad people like Roberts are willing to speak out, even if at times they seem over the top.
On the 100th Anniversary of World War 1, the Western powers are again sleepwalking into destructive conflict. Hegemonic ambition has Washington interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine, but developments seem to be moving beyond Washington’s control.
Regime change in Ukraine for a mere $5 billion dollars would be a bargain compared to the massive sums squandered in Iraq ($3,000 billion), Afghanistan ($3,000 billion), Somalia, and Libya, or the money Washington is wasting murdering people with drones in Pakistan and Yemen, or the money Washington has spent supporting al Qaeda in Syria, or the massive sums Washington has wasted surrounding Iran with 40 military bases and several fleets in the Persian Gulf in an effort to terrorize Iran into submission.
So far, in Washington’s attempt at regime change in Ukraine large numbers of Americans are not being killed and maimed. Only Ukrainians are dying, all the better for Washington as the deaths are blamed on the Ukrainian government that the US has targeted for overthrow.
The problem with Washington’s plot to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine and install its minions is twofold: The chosen US puppets have lost control of the protests to armed radical elements with historical links to nazism, and Russia regards an EU/NATO takeover of Ukraine as a strategic threat to Russian independence.
Washington overlooked that the financially viable part of today’s Ukraine consists of historical Russian provinces in the east and south that the Soviet leadership merged into Ukraine in order to dilute the fascist elements in western Ukraine that fought for Adolf Hitler against the Soviet Union. It is these ultra-nationalist elements with nazi roots, not Washington’s chosen puppets, who are now in charge of the armed rebellion in Western Ukraine.
If the democratically elected Ukraine government is overthrown, the eastern and southern parts would rejoin Russia. The western part would be looted by Western bankers and corporations, and the NATO Ukraine bases would be targeted by Russian Iskander missiles.
It would be a defeat for Washington and their gullible Ukrainian dupes to see half of the country return to Russia. To save face, Washington might provoke a great power confrontation, which could be the end of all of us.
My series of articles on the situation in Ukraine resulted in a number of interviews from Canada to Russia, with more scheduled. It also produced emotional rants from people of Ukrainian descent whose delusions are impenetrable by facts.
Deranged Russophobes dismissed as propaganda the easily verifiable report of Assistant Secretary of State Nuland’s public address last December, in which she boasted that Washington had spent $5 billion preparing Ukraine to be aligned with Washington’s interests. Protest sympathizers claim that the intercepted telephone call between Nuland and the US Ambassador in Ukraine, in which the two US officials chose the government that would be installed following the coup, is a fake.
One person actually suggested that my position should be aligned with the “sincerity of the Kiev students,” not with the facts.
Some Trekkers and Trekkies were more concerned that I used an improper title for Spock than they were with the prospect of great power confrontation. The point of my article flew off into space and missed planet Earth.
Spock’s mental powers were the best weapon that Starship Enterprise had. Among my graduate school friends, Spock was known as Dr. Spock, because he was the cool, calm, and unemotional member of the crew who could diagnose the problem and save the situation.
There are no Spocks in the US or any Western government and certainly not among the Ukrainian protesters.
I have often wondered if Spock’s Vulcan ancestry was Gene Roddenberry’s way of underlining by contrast the fragility of human reason. In the context of modern military technology, is it possible for life to survive humanity’s penchant for emotion to trump reason and for self-delusion to prevail over factual reality?
Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.
PCR just needs to STFU with his constant damn grand conspiracies. Everything that happens in this world can somehow be connected to a Washington conspiracy to him. If Obama takes a dump, it is surely because he is masterminding a plan to establish a dominion over another territory. Sometimes shit happens with or without any influence of Washington.
PCR jumped the shark long ago. He has as much cred as Alex Jones. Which is not to say that a crackpot squirrel can't find an acorn now and then, but I would never post anything by PCR to support anything I believed.
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -Groucho
PCR jumped the shark long ago. He has as much cred as Alex Jones. Which is not to say that a crackpot squirrel can't find an acorn now and then, but I would never post anything by PCR to support anything I believed.
BJ, every culture and society confronts facts which tend to be suppressed because of the social and psychological costs of not doing so. Similarly, there are political activities, practices and arrangements - deliberate or otherwise - which are usually repressed and tend to remain unacknowledged in polite discourse on either the right and the left. These are inevitably intertwined with intelligence, diplomatic and military activities.
I understand that it gets frustrating, but to deny that any of this happens is as defective a notion as the assertion that it happens everywhere and always. Look at the work of Anthony Sutton, for instance. Here's a good conservative gentleman and affiliated with the respectable Hoover Institution. He spent the better part of his professional career documenting these sub rosa events.
The wiki article on Sutton includes quotes from left and right establishment figures that say about as much:
No doubt, Mr. Woodsman; however, PCR is a hack writer who sees a conspiracy in everything. Even a cursory glance at his writings would reveal his lunacy to you. Ukraine is obviously of strategic importance to Washington and they have certainly tried to influence things; however, this was not some grand scheme of world domination. And these events would have occurred with or without the meddling of Washington.
SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine — Masked men with guns seized government buildings in the capital of Ukraine’s Crimea region on Thursday, barricading themselves inside and raising the Russian flag after mysterious overnight raids that appeared to be the work of militant Russian nationalists who want this volatile Black Sea region ruled from Moscow.
Police officers sealed off all access to the buildings but said that they had no idea who was behind the assault, which sharply escalated tensions in a region that serves as home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and also to a number of radical pro-Russia groups that have appealed to Moscow to protect them from the new interim government in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.
Arsen Avakov, Ukraine’s acting interior minister, called for calm in a posting on his Facebook page, saying that unspecified measures were “being taken to counter the extremist actions and prevent an escalation of an armed conflict in the center of the city.”
But it was unclear how much authority Mr. Avakov has over the police and over other state services in Crimea, where a heavily ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking population mostly views the Ukrainian government installed after the ouster last weekend of President Viktor F. Yanukovych as the illegitimate result of a fascist coup.
“This is the first step toward civil war,” said Igor Baklanov, a computer expert who joined a group of anxious residents gathered in a cold drizzle at a police line near the seized regional legislature. Rumors swirled of Russian troops on the way from Sevastopol, the headquarters of Russia’s fleet, of Russian nationalists arriving in force to reinforce the blockaded government buildings and of negotiations between the local authorities and the unidentified gunmen.
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