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The Ukrainian Government Is Fighting Fascists
Some news accounts of yesterday’s fighting in Kiev make it look as if the government yesterday started the fighting by clearing the Maidan plaza. That was not the case.
There was an attempt by the opposition in parliament to change the constitution. That attempted was defeated by the dully elected majority coalition. Opposition protester then violently attacked the parliament building and tried to storm it. The police responded to that, pressed the protester back and later proceed to kick them out of their launching position. The violent protesters, mostly fascists, confirmed that timeline of events:
Some protesters acknowledged that they had contributed to the violent spiral of events by attacking police officers during street battles early in the day near the Ukrainian Parliament, which the opposition had hoped would approve constitutional amendments curbing President Yanukovych’s powers.
The Ukrainian government is fighting against well armed fascists, not against peaceful protesters. Doug Saunders of Canada’s Globe & Mail recently visited Kiev:
This is the headquarters of Pravy Sektor, or Right Sector, the ultra-right-wing movement, described by some as fascist, whose hundreds of soldiers (they call themselves an army) have become the sharp edge of the two-month-old protest movement that has upturned the politics of Ukraine, cost several lives and forced President Viktor Yanukovych to dismiss the government and promise to reform the constitution.
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[T]he physical organization of these protests, the building of barricades around squares, much of the camp construction and policing, and the pitched and sometimes deadly battles with police are almost entirely the work of the extreme right. In some of Ukraine’s smaller cities, the local protests and seizures of government buildings appear to have been entirely the work of Pravy Sektor.
These folks are evil. Let us hope that Yanukovich now finally, though three month too late in my view, is coming down hard on them.
First off Jeff, you don’t know me and you don’t know what I have and have not been doing to “make a difference” in this world. So that’s your first mistake. I’ll just throw it on the big ol’ pile of other shit you have wrong so far.
“How do you expect to fix the race to the bottom besides helping raise the bottom bar? You sound rather naive. If you’re not, give me a concrete plan of action that will raise a people’s standard of living.”
The race to the bottom IS the plan of action, Jeff.
What part of decades of flatlined wages, spiraling debt, massive inequality and crashing living standards are an indication to you that the goal of capitalism is actually to raise living standards? What part of NAFTA, the TPP, the destruction of Detroit, rising poverty, increasing inequality says to you “we’re on our way up”?
That you have the gall to call anyone naive is pure balls.
If you want a concrete plan of action to raise people’s standards of living, you might follow the example of Venezuela, a real democracy who has brought millions and millions out of poverty and into the mainstream of public life. And people might follow that example if they could Jeff. The problem, though, is that while you are riding your bike, learning your languages, and making your ethereal “accomplishments” in cyberspace, in your “everything is great” American upper-middle class bubble – the country you live in is doing its damnedest to make sure that countries like Venezuela and the Ukraine don’t develop through all manner of attacks.
Venezuela has eradicated illiteracy, halved the population living in poverty, nearly eradicated extreme poverty, reduced inequality, expanded education on every level, become food and energy independent, distributed millions of acres of farms to peasants, reduced infant mortality by huge percentages and nearly eradicated child malnutrition , granted pensions to the elderly, built 700,000 homes, fed the hungry, slashed unemployment and raised wages while reduced hours worked, and doubled per capita GDP. All in the face of relentless attack by its own tiny rich elite and the “world’s only superpower”. It has faced, and is facing, coups and riots and economic sabotage – all apparently because its developing “wrong”. Just like a small peasant society like Vietnam faced a relentless pounding from the world’s most powerful and technologically advanced nation – a “war” as you called it – all because it wanted to be independent.
This kind of development is off-handedly called evil by people like yourself. Never mind those millions who vote for it in droves. Never mind those who gave their lives for it. It’s just the wrong kind of development. The same development that occurred in the Soviet Union and China – despite the attack by the capitalist countries (of which, by the way, your completely bogus numbers and trite propaganda are only one example of).
No doubt things seem pretty good indeed to a guy in the upper-upper middle class. Your living standards probably have been rising. You probably haven’t been foreclosed on. Assuming your a competent web developer (and you may be very focused as you certainly haven’t been spending your time thinking about the world around you) you should be making $75k a year. Do you know that that puts you in the top 95% of Americans in terms of income? Can you imagine where that puts you in the world?
Now it’s just the question of letting the Ukrainians riot and burn their country until they get the same thing, right? And Syria is sure to have a bright future once all the murder is over, right Jeff? And Iraq – sure its been ten years of outright mayhem, but they’ll turn the corner soon – you’re sure of it, right? I mean, it just has to happen. And if it doesn’t, well, we won’t blame our massive war, we’ll just blame “the market”. That’s good Jeff. Seeing a nation’s capital in flames means “development, here we come”. Wake up Jeff.
You live with blinders on. You’re a member of a tiny rich minority in the richest country on the face of the earth, so indoctrinated by its propaganda you think the last time your country committed a crime was in the 19th Century and that its supporting rioters and lying about events halfway across the globe is, in the end, going to make you personally richer.
Naive doesn’t even begin to describe you.
Posted by: guest77 | Feb 23 2014 3:19 utc | 159
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