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Ukraine: A State Falling Apart?
A British lecturer, Paul Vickers, who (allegedly) has been living in Ivano-Frankivsk, a city in west Ukraine with some 200,000 inhabitants, for two plus years, writes about a recent march by the Right Sector fascists there and the general local news.
We find mob rule by competing militia, heavy pressure on politicians and bureaucrats and threats of “lustration” which means that anyone favoring the wrong parties will be thrown out of their public jobs. We remember how well things went in after de-baathification and after all the professional administrators and security folks were pushed from their jobs in Iraq.
This report states that initially today there were some fifty men all from Self-Defence (it also has better photos than me) blocking the street, while Right Sector also turned up in the early afternoon in smallish numbers before the big march around 16:00. Speaking to the press, the Self-Defence issued a statement stating that they do not want to have in a position of authority in the police a man who refuses for now to undergo lustration, i.e. a check on his past. Shortly afterwards, the new head of the regional administration agreed to make all administration workers undergo lustration and barred any ex-Party of Regions figures from taking up posts. Then a little bit later, the new head of the regional administration found that his office had been blockaded by Self-Defence and ‘local businessmen’, according to this report. Together they made a series of demands, including cancellation of certain taxes on wealth and various aspects of certification for motor vehicles and business-related issues. There was ‘Tax Maidan‘ in November 2010 which saw the small-and-medium-sized business community protest against a new tax code, so this protest in Ivano-Frankivsk could be seen in that context.
However, the approach to getting your point across seems very much in the spirit of the post-revolutionary times where there is an evident degree of mob rule and rule by force. The problem is somewhat compounded by the local press which happily write that these activists speak, as the above-linked report wrote, ‘in the name of the city community’, becoming a local echo of Right Sector’s claims to speak ‘for the Ukrainian people’. An ex-student I encountered today outside the police HQ as she passed by from university on her way home said to me that “they don’t speak for us”, referring to Right Sector. While the issue of the police head was not something she had contemplated, she expressed great concern with the way local democracy was functioning. There is a clear contrast with the rather impressive local council meeting of 26 November 2013 when the still-functioning council took important decisions and voted in the open air, in front of a more representative group of the local community. However, now there is clearly a growing vacuum in local power structures, it seems that it is possible to seek to impose by force or by threats – the blockaders of the regional governor’s office have threatened to block major road routes in Ivano-Frankivsk region on Friday if their demands are not heard – decisions upon a weak, nascent administration.
This all shows a dangerous development. A state that now lacks the will and capacity, and soon also the money, to assert itself against unwieldy minorities. When (not if) this state falls apart, the “west” would itself lucky if Russa were to take responsible for the eastern parts.
Nobody (42)
Thanks for your friendly words and your attempt to console me but to be honest, what I wrote up there was more meant in a funny and sarcastic way.
Ad “Rogosin”:
As I already hinted elsewhere, there is something indeed very remarkable taking place in Iran that can – and sure enough is – learned from. Rather than breaking down (under all those illegal sanctions) Iran build up a very significant industry and gained self reliance in many regards.
Another preamble to consider is that there are different levels of industry and certain related issues like maintenance (which turned out to be a major problem for Iran because not getting maintenance many complex products like airplanes rapidly became basically unuseable).
Now, Russia has some similar problems in a certain regard. As zusa basically – and willfully and well planned – destroyed major complete Russian industries, Russia experiences two major related problems, a) they need to buy many products, in particular complex products like machining centers or modern trains, and b) their production capacity in many areas is severely limited and unpleasantly depending on western exporters.
One example that comes to mind is military airplanes. While those are for the very large part independently build per se, their production rate is way lower than zusa and a large part of “infra technology” is alien which increases Russias dependency.
As is very obvious (and, of course, understood by Russia) Russia has become militarily potent enough so as to have zusa avoid any military conflict at pretty any cost. zusas behaviour re. ukraine provides ample proof.
Accordingly Russias priority must not be to produce as many weapon systems as quickly as any possible but it can – and is strongly “advised” by the sanction threats – to rather build up its industrial independence and its infra industrial capacities that is, things from modern industrial transport systems to machining centers.
Not taking care of that risks serious although quite limited damage.
Going that way, however, offers even two major and strategically important advantages.
For one Russia, while keeping its current production almost normally running, it can very considerably increase near future capacities, decrease production cost, and very much enhance production flexibility, and such create yet another follow up advantage, namely to be able to more flexibly, quickly end at reduced costs serve their weapons markets.
Secondly and even more importantly Russia must – and will – climb up again on the pyramid ladder. To explain quickly: Selling ressources like oil or iron mineral is the lowest level providing the lowest income. At the next level, for instance, basic steel bars or plates, considerably more money is earned. … aso … At the second highest level, the production of complex and technologically advanced goods most money (except for the highest level, pure know how without production, which, however is not attractive on a state economic level) is earned. While, to put it exemplatory, a ton of iron ore earns, say, 50 zus$, and a ton of basic steel bar or plates already earns, say, 300 zus$, a ton of, say, modern weapons system earns 1 mio zus$.
Russia already was there, 25 years ago before zusa completely ruined, plundered, and destroyed major industries. And it must climb back up anyway.
The threatened sanctions strongly push Russia toward enhancing their efforts to reclimb the pyramid, alone for independence.
The result with Iran is already recognizable as desastrous (for the sanctioning wezt). There are, for instance, managers from the car industry, to name a prominent example, queuing up and scratching at Irans doors. Iran, however, has definitely not forgotten who terrorized them for many years and, very importantly, they simply don’t need the west hardly anymore.
Translate that to Russia looking at a very current example. There are rumours that the CEO of Russian railways is a weztern list of personae non gratae. At the same time there are bln zeuro projects going on, which of course european companies (who earned wagon loads of money with Russian railways) will be excluded from. Both Japan and China also have comparable technologies and products …
Russia won’t loose much but Germany and France will have thousands of jobs losses, blns of revenue lossesand an extremely hard time to re-enter the Russian market which at the same time will be considerably less in need of weztern products.
Just add the numbers up. Iran plus Russia is about 200 mio. people in basically rich countries (they have trillions of zeuro in their underground). That equates roughly to the size of the German, French, and english markets combined! And that market is lost, very pissed off, and very hard to re-enter.
So, Rogozin knew exactly what he talked about and he was painfully (for the wezt) right.
Those sanction will turn out to be 10%-20% harmful to Russia and 80%-90% harmful to the weztern countries. Additionally the “Iran effect” of effectively trengthening the sanctioned country will beat back at the sanctionizers.
Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Mar 14 2014 22:55 utc | 53
Nora
Ad “endgame”:
I Think it’s way more complex that we can possibly dissect and analyze here to a reasonable degree.
I do not agree that izrael has no dog in this; at the very minimum izrael once more has the “make jews understand that only izrael is secure for them” dog in it. That dog, however, is in it, no matter the sides, as long as nazis are active.
As for uk it’s simple. They live in zusas ass and whereever that ass moves the brits move. camerons statement to kerry was loud and clear enough for a “yes sir, massa sahib, whatever you wish, sir, thank you, sir”.
zusas role is simple, too, according to my lengthy “essay” explaining how zusa ticks and why (that probably nobody read because, hurray, there was a new thread while I wrote it … grrr).
To brutally compress it:
It’s an endgame, yes, or, more correctly, it will turn out to be one, albeit not to zusas benefit. But in a weird sense and to a certain degree, it probably was even known to be a kind endgame or desperate move by zusa.
Russia is the military part, China is the economic part of “the threat”, embodied to a large degree by BRICS, seen from zusas perspective. While they do try, as little as they can, to weaken China, zusa always having relied on the military as the most important (and meanwhile sole) base for pretty everything (by far not only foreign policy) Russia is the primary target.
Basically since MacKinder there is the – not completely wrong but neither fully correct – anglo-saxon understanding that ukraine (in the core of MacKinders Eurasia “heartland”) is the key to world power and anyway a major threat to zusas world domination need (yes, “need”, not merely desire). This, of course, made it particularly attractive as a tool against Russia.
Sure, there are some other interests, too, like black sea oil, or the famous missile base interests, but that’s basically peanuts; the core and priority for zusa was simply to create a fulcrum for a lever that could tear Russia apart.
Being militarily weak they couldn’t risk to be officially involved and being financially broken they couldn’t afford neither. So zusa chose their “last aace” approach, basically following the Gladio protocol using nazis; in part because those were somewhat trained, easily to be manipulated, cheap to get; partly because zionists *do* play a not even so discrete and quite powerful role in ukraine since many, many years.
The fact that zusa plan failed and failed big-time for the largest part wasn’t that much due to stupidity but rather due to urgency. A lot of things evolved very differently and way faster than zusa had thought and calculated. So, shamefully simple as this may sound, zusa acted out of a – justified – feeling of urgency and out of desperation. Obviously they had to pull the whole thing off in a hurry and hence sloppy.
And they made “internal” errors, too, and big ones. An evident one being misinterpreting and badly guessing the zeu factor. For one, anything even remotely nazi is a major no-go in Germany. The very imagination of being linked to nazis who say things like “we will kill all jew pigs” is an absolute nightmare for merkel and her accomplices.
Another problem is that everyone knows that this was a zusa operation, at least since the nuland leak. It will be extremely difficult to explain to the Europeans why they are to pay 95% of the bill for something that wasn’t in their interest in the first place.
In short, major tension between zusa und europe are in the making.
And finally zusa, as is in their nature, badly underestimated Russia and particularly Putin. Sure, they had to assume that Russia wouldn’t be happy but they didn’t expect Russia, after all under a political and media attack from all zato, turning all their gun turrets toward zusa and being perfectly ready to open fire at all cannons, militarily, economically, and even the worst gun of all, the one targeting the zus$.
Additionally they miscalculated in thinking that Russia would make some trouble in and around ukraine but would in the end not be able to do much about it.
Now, Russia de facto is in the position to do whatever they fucking please in and with ukraine and zusa/zeu is all but out of control. Furthermore Russia will not suffer much but actually *use* any sanctions against it for the better of Russia. Additionally, just to make sure, the snake will not raise its head again, Russia, you bet, is working on a major operation to kill the zus$ monopoly. And again, the sanctions, even the mere threat of sanction will in the end work *for* Russia and not against her because Russia just takes it as an urgent invitation to buy and sell in Ruble or Yuan and certainly not in zus$ and probably neither in zeuro.
Last but not least, one price zusa will pay is that, seeing zusas bloody obvious weakness and lack of real power, many countries will feel emboldened in their dealings with – or even against – zusa.
This whole thing will turn out not as an end game but as an end to zusa and, to a degree to zeu, games.
Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Mar 15 2014 0:31 utc | 66
This is for Toivo and remembererringgiap
Which came first: the puppet or the puppeteer? Israel thirsts for water, oil, regional hegemony and land expansion and Russia is one of two major players getting in the way (which I’ll get to later in the post).
From a 2006 article: Where does Israel get its oil? I’ll answer this question first: It’s not where it gets its oil now, it’s where it wants and needs to get its oil that matters most.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to seek nearby suppliers. In the lead-up to the war in Iraq, there was some talk of restarting an abandoned pipeline that runs from Mosul, Iraq, to Haifa. In order for this to happen, Israel would need to somehow wrangle the support of the Syrians, since they control part of the route.
Israel has long sought a local source of oil, especially since the oil crisis of 1973. Having a nearby supplier would increase Israel’s energy security and reduce the cost of its imports. Iran filled that need for a while: Starting in 1968, the Israelis used a pipe called the “TIPline” to import Iranian oil from the Red Sea. But the shah was overthrown in 1979, and Iran shut off the tap.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2006/07/where_does_israel_get_oil.html
Prior to the bombing of Lebanon, Israel and Turkey had announced the underwater pipeline routes, which bypassed Syria and Lebanon. These underwater pipeline routes do not overtly encroach on the territorial sovereignty of Lebanon and Syria.
On the other hand, the development of alternative land based corridors (for oil and water) through Lebanon and Syria would require Israeli-Turkish territorial control over the Eastern Mediterranean coastline through Lebanon and Syria.
The implementation of a land-based corridor, as opposed to the underwater pipeline project, would require the militarisation of the East Mediterranean coastline, extending from the port of Ceyhan across Syria and Lebanon to the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Is this not one of the hidden objectives of the war on Lebanon?
Also involved in this project is a pipeline to bring water to Israel, pumping water from upstream resources of the Tigris and Euphrates river system in Anatolia. This has been a long-run strategic objective of Israel to the detriment of Syria and Iraq. Israel’s agenda with regard to water is supported by the military cooperation agreement between Tel Aviv and Ankara.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-war-on-lebanon-and-the-battle-for-oil/2824
So there you have just ONE Zionist motive for helping to fabricate war with Iraq at the OSP (Office of Special Plans Defense Dept.), plotting ways to destabilize Syria and topple Assad and pushing for war with Iran. And I by-passed their Lebanon adventures which are a fascinating read in that article and oil exploration in the Golan Heights. But Zionists don’t only have the oil & water goals in mind. Their aim goes far beyond that and that’s why Congress is Zionist-occupied territory.
@ Toivo 53 wrote:
Israel has no dog in this fight at all. In fact, their foreign ministry values good relations with Russia and I seriously doubt that they would let some of their more zealous Zionist allies spoil that relationship. It is too easy to see a Zionist conspiracy here…
REALLY?
From the same article above:
The objective of Israel is not only to acquire Caspian sea oil for its own consumption needs but also to play a key role in re-exporting Caspian sea oil back to the Asian markets through the Red Sea port of Eilat. The strategic implications of this re-routing of Caspian sea oil are farreaching.
Diverting Central Asian oil and gas to the Eastern Mediterranean (under Israeli military protection), for re-export back to Asia, serves to undermine the inter-Asian energy market, which is based on the development of direct pipeline corridors linking Central Asia and Russia to South Asia, China and the Far East.
Ultimately, this design is intended to weaken Russia’s role in Central Asia and cut off China from Central Asian oil resources. It is also intended to isolate Iran.
Meanwhile, Israel has emerged as a new powerful player in the global energy market.
Since Michel Chossudovsky wrote this prophetic article Russia already has an established military port in Tartus, Syria.
Meanwhile, Moscow has responded to the US-Israeli-Turkish design to militarize the East Mediterranean coastline with plans to establish a Russian naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus:
“Defense Ministry sources point out that a naval base in Tartus will enable Russia to solidify its positions in the Middle East and ensure security of Syria. Moscow intends to deploy an air defense system around the base – to provide air cover for the base itself and a substantial part of Syrian territory. (S-300PMU-2 Favorit systems will not be turned over to the Syrians. They will be manned and serviced by Russian personnel.)
(Kommerzant, 2 June 2006)
Tartus is strategically located within 30 km. of the Lebanese border.
Moreover, Moscow and Damascus have reached an agreement on the modernization of Syria’s air defenses as well as a program in support to its ground forces, the modernization of its MIG-29 fighters as well as its submarines. (Kommerzant, 2 June 2006). In the context of an escalating conflict, these developments have farreaching implications.
And that’s not all the Russians are up to with Syria to get under Zionist skin:
http://rt.com/business/syria-oil-gas-russia-795/
And Russia’s working on signing another similar deal with Lebanon.
So Zionists not only have a dog in this race, they’re intention is to OWN THE RACE and U.S. foreign policy which is undoubtedly already a fait accompli.
Posted by: kalithea | Mar 15 2014 1:38 utc | 74
(71)
Congratulations to bevin. And shame on Mike Whitney who evidently gathers his “insights” by reading whatever sounds nice and is zusa-centric (read: intelligible to his zamerican “mind”).
While bevin often offers interesting thoughts on diverse matters, he just once more didn’t just miss the target but actually shot at another planet it seems. Because on this planet here things are very different.
No, there isn’t one. What the US is doing is stretching Russia and China, testing them
So, bevin after all agrees that zusas stupidity is indeed unlimited?
Because the one who must be worried about “stretching” is zusa, not Russia or China. In fact it is them who might stretch and it’s zusa who will be the victim. Russias and Chinas geographical situation makes it easy to cover large parts of each other and to combine their forces. zusa on the other hand would be in the unpleasant – and very expensive and dangerous – position of having to transport troups across two oceans for thousands of miles. Introducing Chinas DF-21 into the equation would deny zusa its largest and most important bases at its most important allies (read: forced colonies) in the region and, to make things worse, force zusa to make an ugly multihop over Guam. I’ll generously leave aside the risk of a large part of zusas fleet not suriving the cross-Pacific journey.
The next move is very likely to come in Syria and ask the question “Is Russia so pre-occupied in Crimea that we can get away with, for example, an Israeli missile attack on Damascus?”
Maybe. But not to stretch or stress Russia. Simply because ukraine with an “active” army of 4.000 after a general mobilisation would hardly be anything but a very minor nuisance to Russia, who could simply re-add the few ships it took off the Syria theater to its still present force there.
Any why shoud zusa do that? They were told to leave there and to stop making trouble and they went to make trouble in ukraine after that in the first place. Should we add masochism to the list of hardly flattering attributes of zusa?
Similarly, if israel (or zusa, for that matter) did dare to attack Syria again, Russia could very easily do what they did before, namely to stop the shit. And, being at that, it might consider it a good idea to favourably respond to Assads request for some S-300 and some Iskanders which would turn israels adventure very quickly into a russian roulette (pun intended).
This might be a real good time for the US to tempt Tehran with a big offer, perhaps involving Iraq? Who knows? The chances are that it wouldn’t take much to get Rouhani eating out of Washington’s hands.
That paragraph shows, Pardon me, just how grossly arrogant, ignorant, and stupid the zamerican perspective is.
For a starter, the shot in Iran are still called by Chameini and not by rouhani, who is just a tool and one that already has a very hard time standing against a large part of both Iranian society and government and military.
Secondly, zusa is for Iran one thing above all and that’s “the Satan”. zusas chance of being believed and trusted by Iran are close to zero.
And btw., after the ukrainian quagmire – and MAJOR loss of face – chances are that Iran cares even less about zusas offers, lures, and threats.
As for eating out of zusas hand, I don’t like or trust rouhani but I do not consider him a cheap whore. And even if he were, that would be an extremely short meal with rouhani dead before he had swallowed.
I have to ask for your understandings but, Pardon me, it gets boring and point the nonsense out in that bevin text. So I will leave it with one more striking example:
Everywhere the US pushes its aggressions. It loses nothing if it doesn’t win. It is always gambling with House Money.
It seems I have to add “autistic and blind” to the list.
Well, let me detail some parts of bevins “nothing”:
– zusa lost its face and suffered a considerable reputation loss when it had to abort its Syria “operation”.
– zusa was thrown out of Afghanistan. Not exactly helpful for the superpower image.
And sure enough, one could very comfortably count those in A. who like zusa while one couldn’t possibly find enough busses to put everyone in A. in who wants to kill zamericans.
– zusa has lost trillions for/its two wars which it did not even win.
– zusa has hundreds of thousands of veterans who are maimed or psychically seriously deranged, some of them going berserk on zusas streets and very many of them not even getting proper medical treatment.
– zusa hast lost face and massive amounts of reputation again in ukraine and has gained but a guarantee to be hated and despised in that country (or soon countries) for decades.
And last but by no means least, zusa has provoked a situation in which it will quite soon loose what bevin calls “house money”.
But thanks to the valuable hints I have learned now that even “intellectual” or “non mainstream” zusa media can’t be trusted and isn’t much different from the zusa-centric stupid, ignorant, blatantly bullshit spattering msm.
Ceterum censeo israel americanamque vehementer delenda esse!
Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Mar 15 2014 2:39 utc | 84
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