Ukraine: Kiev Fails Again, Propaganda Aims for WWIII

April 16, 2014

When Kiev announced to use the military in the "anti-terrorist" campaign in eastern Ukraine I wondered:

who from the [Ukrainian] military will sign up for this?

A company force from a Ukrainian airborne brigade, supposed to be the better equipped and able Ukrainian troops, did sign up, or more likely was ordered to act, and immediately failed. The troops were met by unarmed local Ukrainians blocking the roads and demanding that weapons be turned down. Some of the troops gave up their weapons, some just turned their rides around, some joined the locals, some went home. No shoots were fired today. Kiev's "anti-terrorist" campaign has failed. Let us now see what the CIA's Brennan and his puppets in Kiev come up with next. Anti-terrorists drones?

The anti-Russian onslaught in the "western" media continues. According to the now proliferating storyline in many main-stream media comments the issue is this:

"Putin is looking for world domination and taking over Crimea was just a start. The whole Ukraine issue is one big KGB plot. Putin arranged for the U.S. State Department to pay some $5 billion to instigate a coup in Kiev which then enabled Putin to stir up the people in Crimea and to swallow the island into his ever growing dominion. The KGB arranged for the eastern Ukrainians to become terrorists by paying the Kiev coup government to prohibit the official use of the Russian language and by making the Putin pal Tymoishenko threaten eastern Ukrainians with nukes. Russian forces, which miraculously can not be seen, now joined the eastern Ukrainian terrorists in force and are robbing the Ukrainian army of its arms. They will soon be joined by Mongol hordes, march on Warsaw, then on to Berlin and beyond."

Fortunately not everyone is buying into that storyline but there are enough crazies out there who do. They include main-stream editors, useless NATO bureaucrats, politicians, weapon dealers and U.S. oil-men who want to sell very expensive liquid natural gas to Europe to replace the cheap Gazprom pipeline gas. The problem is that these confused storielines und interests, when extrapolated, seem to end up in a marketing campaign for World War III. The world has no need for such.

Posted by b on April 16, 2014 at 18:08 UTC | Permalink

Comments

#81 et seq, the NYT story, dateline 16th (obviously a wrap-up after yestdys events):

They faced not only the civilians, but behind them a force of well-armed men in unmarked green uniforms, who Western governments have said are either Russian soldiers or Russian-equipped militants. These soldiers were well armed. They carried radios and ammunition pouches. Some had RPG launchers slung over their shoulders.

So do we have any technical issues with these claims? Radios? RPGs?

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Apr 17 2014 3:47 utc | 101

@Rowan Berkeley #101:
As I said before, to a certain extent Western elites (and that includes NY Times correspondents) are experiencing culture shock at the development that not only Russia, but now the Ukrainian people, are resisting the Empire. The whole US Empire thing was largely a confidence trick, so when it is revealed that the emperor has no clothes, the elites get scared and confused.
Thus, it’s as likely as not that when the NY Times says that the men in question had radios and RPGs, the journalist who reported that story or an editor just made that up out of thin air. There are no photographs of men in eastern Ukraine carrying RPGs. And if journalists are prevented from taking photographs by military people, the journalists will usually complain about that in a news report, and there have been no such news reports. We had plenty of photographs of the polite men in green in the Crimea.

Posted by: Demian | Apr 17 2014 4:20 utc | 102

Posted by: dh | Apr 16, 2014 7:03:23 PM | 66
“@64 I suspect at least some of the protesters were armed. The point is the APCs weren’t worth dying for.”
If you take a close look at this photo:
http://rt.com/files/news/25/56/c0/00/bbc-1.jpg
You can see that those two protestors were heavily armed with at least two arms each (what they had concealed behind their backs remain unknown at this time). Furthermore, they have tricked the Ukrainian soldiers into donning those St. George ribbons Russians use to brainwash the unsuspecting. These are one of those Russian secret mind control weapons one often hears rumors of in the west. Wearers of the ribbons become Russian KGB controlled zombies. Note the gentleman with the “young woman”. He is completely unaware of the dangerous path he is about to embark upon.

Posted by: scalawag | Apr 17 2014 4:38 utc | 103

A headline and intro I am seeing posted at Yahoo news:
“Ukraine army’s humiliations pile up as eastern push fizzles
The humiliation Wednesday of the Ukrainian army in its much-vaunted “anti-terrorist” push into separatist eastern territory makes an embarrassing string of failures even worse. They pointed out that the region, the Donbass, is hostile to Kiev’s new, pro-EU leaders, and home to magnates and police…
AFP”
I usually don’t bother looking beyond the headlines and intro of the western msm, so my comment is biased, but I don’t believe I’ve seen such an admittance of failure among the “chosen believers” like that before. Is the western propaganda wall crumbling in the face of reality? Are they being forced to alter their BS so as to retain some semblance of credibility now (it usually happens sooner or later)?
Anyway, let’s hope more Ukrainian soldiers’ see their training and indoctrination overcome by pretty women and enthusiastic kids. This is how wars are prevented and people realize their common humanity.

Posted by: scalawag | Apr 17 2014 5:09 utc | 104

http://rt.com/news/mariupol-base-shooting-ukraine-008/ Three dead, 12 injured as anti-govt protesters rally near Ukrainian military base – reports
“Protester chatter blames unidentified provocateurs for the shooting. Demonstrators say a group of people arrived at the protester-held City Hall of Mariupol and called on people staying there to go to the military base to try to seize it.”
While the fascist west, though their bandera junta, pretends the Ukrainian soldiers are switching sides as an elaborate ruse, their agent provocateurs are busy working to make sure conflict happens.

Posted by: scalawag | Apr 17 2014 6:00 utc | 105

What I understand by reading various posts here is that…the move ( flooding the market with USTBs all of a sudden) is definitely not in the interest of the oligarchs (Russian and Ukrainian). So if we modify our analysis by considering a tug of war between western money hungry and power hungry elites….and BRICS oligarchs …instead of considering nation states it seems that west will wrangle as much as it can but Russia will secure southern and eastern Ukraine. And at the end of the day Ukranian Aam Aadmi…or the common man as they call in India…will be the suckers!! 🙁 Pretty darn gloomy situation….am I right??

Posted by: Grivko | Apr 17 2014 6:08 utc | 106

Posted by: Grivko | Apr 17, 2014 2:08:46 AM | 106
Yeah, the “hell with ’em all, right, because they are all evil” line. Works almost every time to undermine left and progressive support for the victims of western fascism.
This was used by Z Magazine in order to promote the break-up of Yugoslavia. “They are all a bunch of fascists, so don’t pay attention and just let it all go to hell. Trust us, if the “left” needs to know about this, we will tell you”. The “people went on to become the major R2P propaganda outlet that they are now.
Such propaganda works to serve western NWO interests, and only these interests.
BTW, note I wrote almost every time. Each time they pull it, less people buy it. Getting to be a trend…

Posted by: scalawag | Apr 17 2014 6:32 utc | 107

@107 I would agree with what you said, but I dont think thats what Grivko was getting at AT ALL…

Posted by: Massinissa | Apr 17 2014 6:34 utc | 108

“The “people went”
Yikes!
Z mag/net went

Posted by: scalawag | Apr 17 2014 6:36 utc | 109

Posted by: Massinissa | Apr 17, 2014 2:34:48 AM | 108
If I misunderstood, I apologize.

Posted by: scalawag | Apr 17 2014 6:39 utc | 110

Posted by: Grivko | Apr 17, 2014 2:08:46 AM | 106
Ukrainian Eastern oligarchs need the Russian market and are threatened by the EU. They do not want to get controlled by Putin.
Russia has higher wages and higher pensions. For a lot of Eastern Ukraine’s people it makes sense to join.
The oligarchs won’t be able to contain this. They won’t be able to contain this in the West of Ukraine as the “Kyiv government” is bankrupt and neither the IMF nor the EU will bale them out as long as there is conflict in the country.
They seem to have sent their soldiers to East Ukraine without supply lines and a place to sleep. An army does not forget this.

Posted by: somebody | Apr 17 2014 6:54 utc | 111

>> Removing the US from that position requires killing the dollar. But for that to happen, the world needs to have a clear vision of what the world will be like once the US is displaced.
Not sure what you mean by “clear vision”. All that’s required is just one bilateral trade agreement at a time. That’s happening.
If the world re-centralizes under some new “global reserve currency”, fine. But, it’s enough for countries to simply stop placing “faith” in the current one and simply start holding currencies of their neighbors. Increasingly, that’s just what they’re doing.

Posted by: too soon | Apr 17 2014 7:09 utc | 112

@somebody # 111
Yea…you’re definitely right (about the people’s uprising in the south and the east) but what about western Ukraine? People might not like whats going on there but nothing seems to be going on there….

Posted by: Grivko | Apr 17 2014 7:14 utc | 113

sorry….i mean it doesn’t seem that there are big protests over there in western ukraine

Posted by: Grivko | Apr 17 2014 7:27 utc | 114

@100
Thankyou Mary Jean for your inspiring thought.

Posted by: Robert | Apr 17 2014 7:36 utc | 115

http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2014/04/16/des-blindes-legers-depeches-par-kiev-dans-l-est-de-l-ukraine_4402245_3214.html
“Symbolic and humiliating defeats”
Yeah, that’s right. Le Monde with such a headline.
Piotr Smolar, the main LM journalist in Ukraine, changed its tone quite a lot. Two month ago, he has some really agressive reports against Russia, would go and interview anyone in Crimea that was against joining RF. Now, well, he met common people in the East and it seems he genuinely softened his opinions, while he still tries to cope with its newspaper editorial line.
There are now so much contradictions in LM reports these last weeks that people no longer trust them. Except some true hard core atlantists/russophobes, many point out the double standard over the situation and openly criticise the newspaper.
It’s about time.

Posted by: Rhysa | Apr 17 2014 7:39 utc | 116

Posted by: Grivko | Apr 17, 2014 3:27:15 AM | 114
This here is a probably correct description of the academic mood in Western Ukraine.
Being academic they forget that systemic low level corruption is not a manifestation of wide spread human evil but simply due to the fact that people are not paid enough to live on the wage of their job.
Anybody who cannot live on EU subsidy in Western Ukraine will emigrate or turn to the far right. If you study right wing programmes they are a mix of parochial nationalism, anti corruption and change of the ruling elites.
Like with Yanoukovich they will make it personal according to political convenience – find scapegoats for the corruption and direct all anger against them. That is their link to the “modern European liberals” dreaming of a multi-ethnic modern democratic state without realizing they have to find a way to pay people’s wages if they don’t want to get killed.

Posted by: somebody | Apr 17 2014 8:17 utc | 117

@somebody # 117
Yeah, corruption is a symptom rather than much of a problem in itself. What you’re describing….reminds me so much about the political situation of my own country, India.

Posted by: Grivko | Apr 17 2014 8:30 utc | 118

Putin live on RT here!
http://rt.com/on-air/putin-question-answer-people/

Posted by: Anonymous | Apr 17 2014 9:14 utc | 119

@47
For several years now the Fed has sold US Treasury Bonds to the US Social Security Trust Fund, as the ‘buyer of last resort’, since by Fed decree, the SSTF can only purchase US Treasury Bonds. In essence, all of Wall Street’s synthetic gambles and co-insurance fraud is being monetized onto a now completely hollowed out retirement fund, at $85B a month.
So basically, whenever you use the psyop words ‘junk’ or ‘fiat’ or ‘worthless’ to describe the US$, what you are really saying is the fiduciary trust you placed for retirement in the Feds was abrogated and looted. Retired on fixed income pensioners, being gentrified out of their homes by local property taxes, and Chinese/Arab REIT investors, are now being ObamaCare-reverse-mortgaged out of their remaining real property, and will become a New Diaspora, should Mil.Gov.Sci.Edu demands for more $Ts overwhelm Fed:SSTF bond bicycling. So they’ll use Structural Adjustments and False Sequester to ride that thin bleeding line.
As a means of currency, however, US$ will remain as strong as America’s food grains, oil and gas, arms and weapons systems, pharmaceuticals, robotic hardware, etc will maintain, and I would argue that both sides, liberal and conservative, have vested interested in confabulating the myth of Hyperinflation Collapse of the US$!!, with Fed v. SSTF realia, to get you to part with your last remaining life savings, the Feds haven’t looted yet, then send pensioners fecklessly after WADC, and the youth fecklessly after Wall Street.
All your looted life savings are never coming back again!! We’ve all been to post-Empire regions where you can see gobsmacked in front of your eyes those shattered streetscapes. Before too long, any town in USA will look like any town in USSR. Only the $y Globalists Enclaves in Big Cities remain, swallowing up surrounding tax regions to pay their upkeep. A friend of mine says to build a house in his toney enclave costs $475 a square foot now.
You could buy an entire house for $475 in Detroit, …but you have no more life savings!

Posted by: Chip Nikh | Apr 17 2014 9:33 utc | 120

I think it’s clear the Ukrainian people are taking the advice I issued the day before yesterday on this blog and other blogs. They are not going to kill each other and do the dying. They’re Calling The Bluff. Let NATO and Russia use their own bombs, bullets and blood in this contrived conflict between “East” and “West” with Ukraine as center stage. They should prepare for a nonviolent counterinsurgency should NATO and Russia roll in and factionalize their country. They should begin now in developing black market networks and developing strategies that will allow for only minimal cooperation with the East/West occupiers and take advantage of opportunities to sabotage the occupiers extraction of their country’s wealth and resources. Anyone supporting either East or West in this faux conflict is an enemy of us Small People everywhere, not just Ukraine, and is as guilty as the WWON (World Wide Oligarch Network) who seek to use the Ukrainians for their own nefarious and selfish purposes. Those of you who have a problem with “American Imperialism”–take the Empire on yourself rather than cheering on the Small People of Ukraine to do your fighting for you or throw themselves willingly and gleefully into another tentacle of the octopus, Putin’s Russia. Just like the West you decry incessantly 24/7, you use proxies to fight your battles. That’s cowardice. You want blood in your ideological battle? Spill your own and quit manipulating others into spilling their’s for your prejudiced purposes.

Posted by: Cold N. Holefield | Apr 17 2014 10:56 utc | 121

Posted by: Cold N. Holefield | Apr 17, 2014 6:56:32 AM | 121

Anyone supporting either East or West in this faux conflict is an enemy of us Small People everywhere, not just Ukraine, and is as guilty as the WWON (World Wide Oligarch Network) who seek to use the Ukrainians for their own nefarious and selfish purposes.

This ‘pox on both their houses’ crap is suicidal. SUI-FUKING-CIDAL. The people of eastern Ukraine would already be defeated if it weren’t for Russia putting restraints on Western-hired thugs’ actions. If you want to know how it goes for Russian speakers when Russia is out to luncH, look at Latvia’s story since the early 1990s. In the real world, which is where Ukraine is, the people of east Ukraine right now need a powerful ally that can take on Western imperialism. Russia is apparently willing to do that.
In the medium and long run, Ukraine is lucky in that it has the opportunity to balance and exploit the two superpowers, and in that way advance its own interests at the expense of the two superpowers. That’s what it should do and federalization opens up that possibility. Becoming an IMF/EU slave colony and a NATO forward base is the nightmare opposite of the ‘balance between East and West’ option.

Posted by: fairleft | Apr 17 2014 11:15 utc | 122

b: the story you refer to in your piece doesn’t appear to exist

Posted by: William Bowles | Apr 17 2014 11:21 utc | 123

Demian #60
I think that missing from your analysis is the fact that the US is a very peculiar hegemon. It cannot itself finance its own empire, as Rowan Berkeley points out. The dollar being the international reserve currency allows the US Treasury to borrow endlessly from foreigners without ever having to pay them back. This started with Nixon, when the US stopped backing up the dollar with gold reserves.
That is very dubious “hegemonic” power. Basically the world has “I owe you’s” from the US. Where is the power in such a relationship?
The US is in the position of a bank that uses clients’ money to lend money. When the clients lose trust and suddenly want their money back all at once the bank will go bankrupt – lose – lose. As far as the US uses clients’ money to get cheap loans themselves – they will have to pay that back or lose the trust of clients risking a bank run … – to clarify – it is the American people who will have to pay that back or risk the break down of the World’s economy.
US economy used to be strong enough to carry this system – I guess it is going to hurt quite a bit in the future.
This here is a historical table of deficits and surpluses of the US
The deficit of 2009 is unprecedented in US history.

Posted by: somebody | Apr 17 2014 11:22 utc | 124

124) The graph of US budget deficits is practically parallel to the history of US military spending from 2002 onwards – after 9/11 when the US went from a budget surplus to a deficit.
Defense spending peaked in 2010 when it reached the percentage of GDP spent at the end of the Cold War.

Posted by: somebody | Apr 17 2014 11:46 utc | 125

125) more on the viability of the US economy – very viable – just this defense spending

The U.S. military budget is $756.4 billion for FY 2015.
…
Military spending is greater than Medicare ($529 billion), Medicaid ($331 billion), or the interest payment on the debt ($251). It’s also more than the three next largest departments combined: Health and Human Services ($73.1 billion), Education ($68.6 billion) and Housing and Urban Development ($32.6 billion).
If all military spending could somehow be safely eliminated, there would be a budget surplus of $174.8 billion, instead of a $564 billion budget deficit.

Americans should feel cheated as the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and the 5 million spent on Ukraine got them … nothing.

Posted by: somebody | Apr 17 2014 12:14 utc | 126

Posted by: too soon | Apr 17 2014 13:04 utc | 127

Sorry for double-post. Didn’t notice “next page” link. Thought my earlier comment didn’t post.

Posted by: too soon | Apr 17 2014 13:04 utc | 128

@ 120
Mostly agree. But, there are special risks to holding your reserves in the leading empire’s fiat:
– Even if it doesn’t devalue its fiat catastrophically, that empire can make sanctions “bite” far more readily than if you weren’t party to its financial system.
– Even if official sanctions never come into play, you’re vulnerable to the empire spying on your financials and using it against you.

Posted by: too soon | Apr 17 2014 13:15 utc | 129

The Trash coming, lock step, out of corporate media vis-à-vis Ukraine is demented but so far the British press seems to have gone more completely insane than anyone else. The German press is bad, the American press is worse but the British seem determined to start WW3 ..I’m wondering if the strength and potency of the propaganda produced is directly relative to the putrescence of the “democracy” that produces it.

Posted by: Marc | Apr 17 2014 18:41 utc | 130

b: the story you refer to in your piece doesn’t appear to exist – Posted by: William Bowles | Apr 17, 2014 7:21:46 AM | 123

If you’re talking about the second link, not the first which is to another MoA story, then yes it does exist and clicking the link works for me. But I noticed something: there’s a hash sign at the end of the link, after the .html suffix. That might screw up some of the less intelligent browsers… 😉

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Apr 17 2014 18:50 utc | 131

Seems like the agreement is a capitulation of Russia. Its not going well for Russia right now IMO. Seems like they try to change course.

Posted by: Anonymous | Apr 17 2014 19:04 utc | 132

@132 Well done. You have correctly predicted tomorrow’s headlines “Putin blinks…Kerry triumphant!”

Posted by: dh | Apr 17 2014 19:20 utc | 133

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27072351 Ukraine crisis: Deal to ‘de-escalate’ agreed in Geneva
“Mr Kerry said the extent of the crisis had been highlighted in recent days by the “grotesque” sending of notices to Jews in eastern Ukraine, demanding that they register themselves as Jewish.”
That “story” was exposed as a hoax even in the Israeli media. The Kerry bot and the BBC know it was a hoax. How can one

Posted by: scalawag | Apr 17 2014 19:39 utc | 134

“How can one” one tolerate leaders and media so disgustingly dishonest and corrupt?

Posted by: scalawag | Apr 17 2014 19:41 utc | 135

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