WaPo Blames Ukraine For Enacting U.S. Like Laws
The lunatics writing the Washington Post editorials want to blame the Ukraine (and the Russian president Putin) for its remarkable patient defense against the foreign supported, neo-nazi vandals of the Svoboda party who try to storm and take over government buildings in Kiev.
One paragraph especially shows their unmatched hypocrisy:
The repressive new restrictions, which criminalize such activity as wearing helmets and setting up tents in public spaces, look a lot like the strategy the Russian ruler used to crush mass demonstrations against his regime in 2011 and 2012. Mr. Yanukovych even adopted the regulation Russia imposed on nongovernment groups that receive foreign funding — a product of Mr. Putin’s paranoid conviction that pro-democracy movements in his country and elsewhere are the result of Western government plots.
Wearing helmets and masks at demonstrations has been unanimously criminalized by the D.C. Council in the Washington Post's hometown. Tents set up in public spaces by the Occupy movement have been outlawed and cleared by force all over the United States. The Russian and Ukrainian laws that regulate foreign money to political organisations are copies of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act which is law of the land since 1938.
None of these "repressive" and "paranoid" restrictions in the United States seem to bother the Washington Post editors. Its only when foreign governments that do not suit the editors' political views enact and use the same laws that these are to condemned and be remarked on at all.
Adding: There is also this nonsense about the Ukrainian government's alleged spying on protesters' cellphone. As Stephen Walt remarked with some snark:
Outrageous that Ukraine is monitoring protestors' communications! Only a very insecure gov't would surveil its own citizens like that.
But there is not even any evidence that the Ukrainian government spies or monitors protesters at all. All it did was sending one SMS message to all cell phones within one cell towers reach. That is a standard emergency function in any cellphone network system and it typically does not reveal the recipients. It has nothing to do with spying. The FBI of course is using cell phone sniffers without warrants. But it is not the Ukraine where that happens.
Posted by b on January 22, 2014 at 15:45 UTC | Permalink
".. and you, all of you, will be left to just examine, judiciously as you will, what we do."
Karl Rove.
Looks like the world is changing in spite of Karl's over-confidence. Now we're being encouraged to listen to 'what we say' and completely forget 'what we do.'
Perhaps this WaPo story will mark the point in History when Yankees decided that not ALL "bullshit you can believe in" is believable ALL the time.
Who's going to be the first Yankee to decide that it's time for America to grow up?
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 22 2014 16:17 utc | 2
This is a classic use of the Big Lie.
The Post knows that by making such assertions it is denying the, unpalatable, reality that the US is a far more totalitarian and far less democratic society than, for example, Ukraine or Belarus.
Even those who realise that the regulations it objects to in Kiev are pale imitations of those enforced in the US (not to mention London or Toronto) are inclined to propagandise themselves to the effect that regulations applied to them must be justified (because their government is good-it assures them of that) whereas in Kiev, about which they know nothing, things are very different, because the media and the government controlling it tell them so.
Are they stupid? No.
Do they want to postpone coming to terms with ugly reality? Yes.
Posted by: bevin | Jan 22 2014 16:44 utc | 3
Seattle's WTO should be singled out as a key example of U.S. hypocrisy when it comes to telling countries what the appropriate response to lawful protest should be. Remember there the National Guard was called out and a "No Protest Zone" was declared encompassing all of downtown after a tiny bit of vandalism resulted from an orgy of police violence.
Posted by: Mike Maloney | Jan 22 2014 17:15 utc | 4
and in other news
"Chief constables are shortly to press the home secretary, Theresa May, to authorise the use of water cannon by any police force across England and Wales to deal with anticipated street protests.
The Association of Chief Police Officers says that the need to control continued protests "from ongoing and potential future austerity measures" justifies the introduction of water cannon across Britain for the first time.
"The London mayor, Boris Johnson, has already announced a consultation on the introduction of water cannon on to the streets of London ready for use by this summer."
Posted by: bevin | Jan 22 2014 17:32 utc | 5
#2;I know I'm redundant,but it's Zionism,with all its flunkies and dupes,who control American policy,be it economic,political,or military.This Yankee hates almost(I can't think of an specific instance in that direction sheesh) every action by our government of late,A to Z.
But they own the pulpit,the MSM.We have blogs.
Posted by: dahoit | Jan 22 2014 18:14 utc | 6
Beyond the fact that the WaPo, NYT and other notorious fascist bullshitting war criminal outlets are carrying these kind of stories is that supposedly "progressive" sites are also doing their parts in pushing the Putin is Hitler meme just in time for Sochi. Go ahead and take a tour of the - at the very least - tepid if not openly anti-Putin reporting of the "progressive" web. It's f*cking disgusting/maddening/eye-opening. While you're at these sites, you might also see anti-Iran/anti-Assad peppered in there amongst the pro-NED/CIA Ukrainian uprising just in time for Geneva. And remember, kids: it's not just the articles that TPTB promulgate. Comments have always been fair game so take that into consideration when your go-to "progressive" site is seemingly all of sudden overrun with posters who seemingly just started paying attention to the news yesterday and who are rabidly anti-Assad/anti-Putin even though they should be better informed given that they are supposedly regular readers of said sites.
One of the most difficult things to realize about living in a country run by out-of-control fascist war criminals is that just because their lies and inanities have been exposed over and over and over again does by no stretch of the imagination mean that they are going to cease in their murderous efforts.
The principle they run on is similar to that used by corporations who - through their negligence/malfeasance - end up killing/maiming a bunch of innocent people but who will just drag out any lawsuits until the plaintiffs - even though clearly on the side of right/justice - simply just don't have the means - financial and otherwise - to proceed in the search for redress.
Oh, you figured out we were bullshitting there, did you?
Well, why not take newly minted BLATANT LIE #16,786,658,990 out for a spin, pissant!
Posted by: JSorrentine | Jan 22 2014 18:20 utc | 7
glad to know "The Hypocrisy Post" still has some avid readership, LOL!
Posted by: james | Jan 22 2014 18:29 utc | 8
Amen, J.
"...about living in a country run by out-of-control fascist war criminals..."
Take Kerry's lies today in Geneva, spouting that same old nonsense that's been debunked over and over. O today announcing the Keystone pipeline "is our highest priority" when all it does is enrich the Koch brothers. The WaPo is an especially nasty outfit as b points out, and "we have our blogs", as dahoit points out, but the 'balance of power' is way out of kilter. We're being crushed, and the world is being mutilated.
Posted by: okie farmer | Jan 22 2014 18:41 utc | 9
More proof that Washington DC is deliberately pouring more gasoline on the ukraninain fire.
Posted by: Willy2 | Jan 22 2014 23:55 utc | 10
Just read carefully this piece of bloody propaganda.
There is pensioner of "76" and "Orthodox priest" (!?, majority is Ortodox so I am not certain what this means, if any) it supposedly to show us there is "young and old" and a priests are "with people".
Or, this Snowdenesque type of story, one needs to contrast it with Snowden's one. Very much the same template.
Independent journalism of the Guardian!?
Posted by: neretva'43 | Jan 23 2014 0:26 utc | 12
The Techno-Militarization Of America You will be (have been) algorithmically assimilated.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 23 2014 1:23 utc | 13
@12
Don't worry, I'm sure FEMEN will join P*ssy Riot at the Amnesty Concert in New York scheduled for February 5th to help us see things in a more clear light. Gee, what other world event is taking place around that time? No one ever said America was subtle!!!
Hey, maybe if we're all good little boys and girls, Sir Elton John - squeal! - will join them onstage!!!!!
Posted by: JSorrentine | Jan 23 2014 1:27 utc | 14
Obama selection of Billie Jean King for Sochi 'genius'
“What better way to show the nation's disgust for President Vladimir Putin's anti-gay propaganda law than for Obama to send an American cultural icon and sports legend who also happens to be openly gay?”
Cultural Icon!?
“When I hear the word "culture" I reach for my gun”
Posted by: neretva'43 | Jan 23 2014 1:51 utc | 15
Joseph Massad, Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World
“One of the more compelling issues to emerge out of the gay movement in the last two decades is the universalization of "gay rights." This project has appropriated the prevailing U.S. discourse on human rights in order to launch itself on an international scale. Following in the footsteps of the white Western women's movement, which had sought to universalize its issues through imposing its own colonial feminism on the women's movements in the non-Western world—a situation that led to major schisms from the outset—the gay movement has adopted a similar missionary role. Organizations dominated by white Western males (the International Lesbian and Gay Association [ILGA] and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission [IGLHRC]) sprang up to defend the rights of "gays and lesbians" all over the world and to advocate on their behalf. ILGA, which was founded in 1978 at the height of the Carter administration's human rights campaign against the Soviet Union and Third World enemies, asserts that one of its aims is to "create a platform for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people internationally, in their quest for recognition, equality, and liberation, in particular through the world and regional conferences." As for IGLHRC, which was founded in 1991, its mission is to "protect and advance the human rights of all people and communities subject to discrimination or abuse on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or HIV status." It is these missionary tasks, the discourse that produces them, and the organizations that represent them that constitute what I call the Gay International.”
While Massad in its article is speaking about Arabs it is obvious the same receipt is implemented in East Europe. One should bear in mind there is the line between Eastern and Western Europe.
Posted by: neretva'43 | Jan 23 2014 2:03 utc | 16
To those miffed by "autocracy" in Russia, it somehow goes unnoticed that the US has the most elaborate and extensive domestic surveillance on the planet, the world's largest population of incarcerated people on the planet, and the most expensive and active military force on the planet. Number One indeed. But behind the stale "freedom" rhetoric, you have wonder... Few "totalitarian" countries - if any - ever managed a police system in which every citizen has a file... but the US has. There is no country that has so many of its young people locked away as the USA. We're talking of "democracy" where the people's representatives have approval ratings in the single-digits and where "free speech" costs $50,000 a minute for a primetime spot on one of the handful of corporate news outlets. I don't think so.
And though these types of things don't happen in the US (possibly because, as the joke goes in Latin America, the US is the only country in the world without a US embassy...) we have to wonder what the punishments would be in the USA, were Greenpeace to assault the oil rig of a US corporation, or if three American hippies disrupted a solemn ceremony at a mega-church or a high-class synagogue. One thing we don't have to wonder about is what happens when people get out on the streets of American cities in protest - the peaceful, sitting ones, get doused, point blank, with chemical sprays. The peaceful, standing ones get kettled, battered with batons and tear gas canisters. Finally the mildly disruptive ones (god forbid!) get rioted on by the police. But of course really these are light punishments as it isn't unprecedented for peaceful protestors to simply be shot dead - as occurred on more than one US college campus during the Vietnam War.
One bright spot: if internet comments in some publications are any guide, the number of Americans who swallow the media humdrum put out against our "enemies" is falling fast. Fewer and fewer people focus on the invented misdeeds of foreign leaders when we have our our own domestic despots to deal with. Since the class war began in earnest in 2008 - the financial crisis being its Pearl Harbor - a quick examination of the globes finds the very, very wealthy few - and the thoroughly robbed rest. Robbed of everything - of our labor, of our culture, of our privacy, and of course, our political power. And unfortunately the result of the austerity is largely to pay the wealthy for our own repression - as the tax burden gets shifted to the rest of us and social spending drops, payments to the security state grow.
The only thing left is to say: let the fuckers bring out the firehoses if they think it will help them - we know the Tree of Liberty requires something a little thicker.
Posted by: guest77 | Jan 23 2014 3:00 utc | 17
Well...
http://rt.com/news/ukraine-kiev-opposition-clashes-045/
Scroll down half way to "Petrol bombs are being thrown in the middle of the cordons, settling police uniforms on fire."
Uniforms.
Right. If this isn't massive self restraint I don't remember people's park.
Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 23 2014 3:22 utc | 18
The lack of scruples amongst the US power elite is really hard to fathom. It appears that sparking civil wars in pursuit of ones "national interests" is now US policy - no matter how many die in the process.
Perhaps we may see something like what the US has done with Shia and Sunni in the Middle East, now focusing on splitting the the Ukraine. Perhaps the US/NATO goal is, at heart, to destroy social unity where it currently exists and to cause violence between two groups that cannot easily be overcome afterwards - to give the right-wingers and nationalists on both sides excuses to further tear the once unified country apart with the end goal of either partition or the creation of an ethno-centric "democracy" where in Russian influence is greatly diminished.
This has been US policy in Central America and, as already mentioned, we have seen it taken to a new level with US creation of both Shia death squads and Sunni death squads in Iraq. Of course we have seen just how dangerous the methodically planned rending of a society into its constituent pieces can be - and the kind of vicious, barbaric violence it can generate. My guess is that this may be what we are seeing now in the Ukraine. Note that it also follows the same pattern in Russia, where the ultimate goal of US support for that racist filth Navalny and his counterparts in the Caucasus, the Turkish/Wahhabi-sponsored terrorists, is to cleave Russian society (and eventually the country) by ethnicity and religion. This is, of course, something the Russian people must reject absolutely unless they want to fall victim to another period like the 1990s.
But of course maybe I'm just being cynical and the West is actually interested in Ukrainian freedom and democracy just like they are in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Syria...
....
I see some of the protestors in the Ukraine throwing bricks. Surely, this doesn't qualify as "peaceful" by anyone's stretch of the imagination.
In that light, I would point out that in New York City, the police do not even allow you to carry a sign with a wooden stick. All signs have to be cardboard tubes. Also, at one point, warm clothes were restricted items at Zuccotti Park.
Are there any items that I should not bring to a protest? The NYPD has a standing practice of barring the use of rigid materials as supports for signs at demonstrations (wooden sticks, pipes or plastic tubes). Instead, use cardboard tubing or hold your signs.Can I wear a mask (or a gasmask) at a protest? Police in New York City sometimes enforce a very old city law that bans masks and facial coverings at gatherings of two or more people unless it is “a masquerade party or like entertainment.”
Can I erect tents, install portable toilets, use generators, etc. in privately owned public spaces such as Zuccotti Park? Brookfield no longer permits tents, structures, tarps, sleeping bags, large bags, or lying down in the park. Brookfield and the NYPD enforce both these and other rules to varying degrees at different times. Other items that have been restricted at times include cardboard signs, musical instruments, chairs, food, blankets and warm clothes.
Posted by: guest77 | Jan 23 2014 3:55 utc | 19
For any European early birds, here is what looks like a live cam feed over that square in Kiev:
http://rt.com/on-air/ukraine-kiev-police-protesters/
As of 6:00 am Kiev time it looks like the 'revolutionaries' still hold the square.
Posted by: ToivoS | Jan 23 2014 4:01 utc | 20
It's got so that all the news that's printed on paper, all the news that appears on a TV screen, and most of the news on the internet ... is a lie. Has been for a long time, I suppose.
But now it seems to be a more effectively concerted lie. All leads back to a more amalgamated and disciplined source ... amazon.com … and you’re done !, for instance.
Yes, the techniques are familiar.
Posted by: john francis lee | Jan 23 2014 4:37 utc | 21
Good post B!
Cant take this hypocrisy, EU really want civil war in Ukraine.
Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 23 2014 9:27 utc | 22
19 the Brits have been doing this for centuries, it's called divide et impera
Posted by: Cu Chulainn | Jan 23 2014 11:52 utc | 23
US media: short for: USeless media
meanwhile:"
Several thousand demonstrators surrounded the compound of the US Embassy in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, on Wednesday evening. According to the TSN television station, the action was organized by a recently established movement, Kievans for a Clean City, which insists that pro-European Union protesters' barricades in Kiev's central Khreshchatyk Street should be dismantled.
The movement's leader Ivan Protsenko brought a written message to the US Embassy, demanding that there should be no interference in Ukraine's domestic issues. He believes that a US-funded "color revolution" project is being implemented in Ukraine.
"America is to blame for all the events taking place in the center of the capital. Funding comes from there. It is necessary to put a stop to this. We are saying out loud for the whole world to hear: "Goodbye, America! America, there should be peace in Ukraine!," Protsenko said.
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_01_23/Politics-First-magazine-editor-claims-Kiev-protests-organized-by-EU-and-US-2784/
Posted by: brian | Jan 23 2014 12:48 utc | 24
Like so often the farts generated by zamerican self-delusion, idiocy, idiocy again, idiocy a third time, hybris, lies, and double-standards are funny - but completely insignificant.
Fact is that Russia was the only party to a) stay relatively quiet and to respect Ukraines souvereignty and b) actually help financially.
What's going to happen? Well, today the (ridiculous ultimatum that obviously was a zusa "idea") runs out. And then? Well, either nothing, meaning the protests just go on or people even go home, which translates into the terrorists losing or the government - finally! - crushes down the zusa sponsored terrorists.
When (not "if" but "when" because zamericans are brain dead enough to do that) zeu and zusa complain about "brutality" all the Ukrainian government needs to do is to play videos of zusas occupy movement or of the recent Hamburg (Germany) state brutality.
But then, frankly, who gives batshit what zusa "thinks" anyway? They'd better care about their devastatingly high number of jobless citizens or about their broken infrastructure or about their extremely high rate of criminals in politics.
Ceterum censeo israel americanamque delenda esse.
Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Jan 23 2014 13:17 utc | 26
Posted by: brian | Jan 23 2014 14:00 utc | 27
I smell a conspiracy:
- The WaPo smears the Ukrain
- John Kerry threathens the Ukrain with (harsh) sanctions.
What do you mean "Coincidence" ???
Posted by: Willy2 | Jan 23 2014 16:06 utc | 28
in the US, they also shut cell phone service off entirely, as they did for a protest at a Bay Area public transit (BART) protest. it can also be selectively, as it was for a pro-choice text message. even without protests/free speech, normal life is trampled by police in the US all the time. you can be arrested for sleeping in city parks, arrested and vandalized for having no place to sleep, shot for any reason whatsoever, and every 36 hours on average an unarmed African American is murdered by police - AND IT'S LEGAL.
you can be beaten and arrested for filming the police, and I have to say from experience that our courts are FULL of police testifying against the public. I don't know how they have time to shoot anyone, they practically live in the courtrooms. I don't remember it being that way 40 years ago.
the US is an ancient primitive country, and over 200 years of aging and corruption has sunk it to the bottom.
Posted by: anon | Jan 23 2014 18:18 utc | 29
p.s.
the people of the US would like to "move closer" to the EU, or Canada, or Scandinavia. we want public health care. should we burn down a city and see if we get it? will Victoria Nuland at least give us food?
we don't want to end up like the USSR, let's look to the "west".
Posted by: anon | Jan 23 2014 20:42 utc | 30
The comments to this entry are closed.
With the way things are going, the EU risks igniting an Europe-wide civil war with their silly policies. They still don't understand why not every European country don't want to be part of them.
What's happening there is an attempt to push through with a failed attempted colored coup. The boxer and his EU backers are amazed at how their Ukrainian state has resisted their deadly onslaught.
In the US, doing this kind of protest could get you either killed or jailed for life.
Posted by: Zico | Jan 22 2014 16:15 utc | 1