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March 12, 2022
Ukraine Open Thread 2022-24
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Saker site is back up. Must have been temporary overload, despite new server added.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 13 2022 0:41 utc | 201
Iran apparently hit US Consulate/Base in Erbil Iraq. Multiple Fateh 110 missiles.
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-701103
Posted by: WastelandChic | Mar 13 2022 0:42 utc | 202
I saw somewhere(probably Saker)a calculation of number of soldiers required to occupy Ukraine and without being able to give a qualified (because I’m unqualified and it is too much work)opinion, the numbers are off the charts. We have the deposed president, (whose name temporarily escapes me) lurking in Poland, previous president presumably in Kiev, and Zelensky in front of some camera somewhere. The Russians have left local government intact where they have passed through and presumably the Ukranian parliament is still not all escaped (and they can always come back). The big question is whether Zelensky can avoid getting killed by his minders (both from the West and Nazis) stay true to his sponsors (difficult) and stay long enough to “govern” after negotiating a sort of occupation. Or he could just wing it and go for his 32 million property in Florida.
The most difficult task is the de-Nazi bit, since they seem to be everywhere and are seriously violent. There can be some bulk solutions on the front lines, but at the end there will need to be internal policing. (Start with the chief) Since infrastructure is and will be functioning the
other issue will have to be leadership. The two former heads who are lurking are probably not suitable, and the danger is that you would end up doing the same thing as V. Nuland and be publicly appointing a puppet. So if Zelensky
escapes, Russia will need to throw the problem to the parliament and hope for the best. Oh. and if I were Mr. P I would be instructing his mythically powerful intelligence agency to find and obtain cooperation (however its done) from the pilot(s) of the private jet(s) of the ilk of K’sky. This so that in his next flight he ends up in a unscheduled stop in a unknown airport.
Posted by: YY | Mar 13 2022 0:48 utc | 204
When the bandit state periodically bombs and shells Palestinian hospitals and other medical facilities on their routine rampages, Australian politicians and religious leaders are silent.
https://archive.org/details/Aljazeeraasset-GazaShifa138
https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/middle-east-unrest/another-gaza-hospital-hit-israeli-strike-four-dead-40-hurt-n161086
https://www.newsweek.com/mysterious-case-gazas-al-shifa-hospital-262086
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28399292
https://theintercept.com/2021/05/21/gaza-bombing-hospital-israel/
see also Al Aqsa Hospital Gaza. This atrocity has mostly been scrubbed from the net but I remember.
Even when Australian Labor Party affiliated APHEDA projects are shelled:
https://www.apheda.org.au/statement-palestine-may-2021/
I have attended APHEDA fundraising functions for Palestine projects along with serving ALP MP’s [all talk behind closed doors].
My cousin is a practising Anglican [Epicopalian for NA readers] who contributes to projects in Palestine. Anglican leaders are also mute, despite the routine wanton destruction of their financed and sponsored projects.
https://anglicanoverseasaid.org.au/our-work/where-we-work-2/occupied-palestinian-territories/
Including the long suffering Ahli Arab Hospital.
https://www.j-diocese.org/wordpress/
Suddenly these hypocrites have found their voice over the Ukraine. Where have they been over Palestine and the eight years of shelling of the Donbas?
Posted by: Paul | Mar 13 2022 0:48 utc | 205
James 116
sometimes I use the term scumbag and don’t feel bad about it. it’s not racism.
I don’t doubt that a number of people here would/do use the term ‘nazi scum.’ I think it’s an ignorant thing to say but it’s still not racism.
Anything else?
Posted by: reante | Mar 13 2022 0:50 utc | 206
The Western world’s foremost advocate of Human Rights, the United States of America, backed Syrian Kurds in an assault on Raqqa, to break the back of ISIS. ISIS being a consequence of the US ill conceived invasion of Iraq which was based on lies. These things everyone paying attention knows.
What Western MSM doesn’t tell the citizens of the free world is the brutal methods the US military employed to destroy it’s own Frankenstein.
Kurds with radio’s, Uncle Sam with lethal weapons delivered from the sky. No humanitarian corridors. No matter, just some brown folks. No Uyghur Genocide sort of thing. It’s all in the spin.
Posted by: bubbles | Mar 13 2022 0:51 utc | 207
BioWarfare Labs adjacent to Russia had me thinking – I wonder how many are adjacent to China (or Iran) and where are they?
Is there a central database for this sort of thing?
Posted by: digital dinosaur | Mar 13 2022 0:52 utc | 208
The Saker site is down.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 13 2022 0:22 utc | 197
Maybe you just used up your quota? That would be perfectly understandable. Site works just fine for me.
Posted by: Bubbles | Mar 13 2022 1:03 utc | 209
Alastair Crooke is early again this week, “‘This Is What Liberal War Fever Looks Like’”:
“Ukraine may be many things … but a ‘gospel of democracy’?”
Yes, it’s primarily about the massive Psyop campaign and speculates what might occur when it fails as it will. Crooke cites this sewage from the NY Times David Brooks:
“The creed of liberalism is getting a second wind [and has] reminded us not only what it looks like to believe in democracy, the liberal order and national honour; but also to act bravely on behalf of these things. They’ve reminded us how the setbacks [may] have caused us to doubt and be passive about the gospel of democracy. But despite all our failings, the gospel is still glowingly true.”
That was published on March 3 as the lies grew ever thicker and the campaign of existential hatred aimed at all things Russian climbed higher, eclipsing the hatred aimed at Germans during WW1. And that’s “the creed of liberalism” and “democracy.” Yes, sewage indeed. But the writer must be deranged to write such garbage, and it’s very clear that Brooks isn’t alone.
Crooke points at a social condition I warned about before, anomie. I disagree with the numbers he thinks afflicted–they’re much larger:
“Every serious crisis, of course, is also an opportunity for mythopoesis – especially at a time of anomie, when a dispirited less than half of a society believes that their country is not invested in them and ‘that the economic and political systems (and the people who run them), are stacked against [them] – no matter what you do’.
“The Anglo-American Establishment has proved adept at intuiting: that owing to such anomie and erosion of our ‘sacred canopy’, a ‘noble lie’ can be used to give a rules-based order a last gasp. Its’ inherent power can be harnessed to generate the outrage as casus belli for global liberalism. After all, what better unifying force than the ‘grand American project’ of war to energise one’s desire for a reappropriated national significance.”
And all that’s at the beginning with much more to follow. Crooke sees the danger that Lavrov sees. He also acknowledges the fact that Russia is far from isolated. The Big Problem: What will the West do when reality comes crashing down to snuff the propaganda as is already occurring in Europe and the elites lose? We haven’t speculated on that yet; perhaps we should.
Now that the Donbass cauldron is more or less closed; what about the larger central cauldron? Is it to be closed too, how many battalions and what armament & composition are currently there and will they (apart from the Azov types) be allowed to escape toward Lvov?
Any takers?
Posted by: digital dinosaur | Mar 13 2022 1:11 utc | 211
bevin 154
i didn’t say that Stalin starved out 20M Ukrainians.
Are you saying that Stalin didn’t play favorites? No, I don’t imagine you are saying that, bevin.
Playing favorites is one of the things I referred to regarding the quote.
The other was racism.
As to the holodomor, I’ll put it this way. I know that for the approx 8million who died from malnutrition/famine during the US Great Depression to (barely) come to light, it took a Soviet scientist poring over all the available population data. And I believe it. I also believe that it took Western data analysts to bring the probably larger Ukrainian famine to light.
Famines happen during civilizational restructurings. These two famines along with China’s, the largest of all, happened in order that industrialism could replace agrarianism; in order that the world could move from slow growth to hyper-growth.
Now imagine what the famines will be like as the world restructures for Degrowth, as it’s currently doing. On purpose. Managed famines in the hundreds of millions and billions, and you might be one of them.
And here you are wanting to talk about my naivety and Stalin’s innocence. There is no innocence, bevin.
Posted by: reante | Mar 13 2022 1:15 utc | 212
@Patroklos #133:
Sallust said that Rome was doomed the moment Carthage was destoyed; the same could be said of the end of the USSR.
UCI Scientists Told Moscow’s Aim Is to Deprive U.S. of Foe (Los Angeles Times, Jean Davidson, December 12, 1988)
…
“Our major secret weapon is to deprive you of an enemy,” said Georgi Arbatov, director of the Soviet Academy of Sciences’ Institute for U.S and Canada Studies.
…
“It’s historical, it’s human, you have to have an enemy,” he said. “So much was built out of this role of the enemy. Your foreign policy, quite a bit of your economy, even your feelings about your country. To have a really good empire, you have to have a really evil empire.”
…
Posted by: S | Mar 13 2022 1:24 utc | 213
Cyprus was definitely punished.
How were they forced to put the munitions close to the flagship power station?
According to the newspapers ,they left the munitions to atrophy in sun and moisture. Why did army heads and specialists allow this?
Why didn’t Cyprus make a big song and dance at the UN and on media ALL around the world, “take this rubbish away from us, it is not ours!” ?
why didn’t smart army chiefs know this was the potential to cause a false flag on Cyprus soil? I did, I could see it a mile away and I am not a trained intelligence analyst at all .
Posted by: Brother Ma | Mar 12 2022 22:31 utc | 159
Cyprus tried to refuse the cargo. Appealed to the UN or somebody beforehand. Cyprus is an unofficial colony still. It has a British Army base. It has a CIA station. The CIA station is how my stepfather met my mother. The military’s paycheck depends more on the colonial rulers than it does the traditional, communist-leaning AKEL. The president was Moscow-educated. It was a UKUSA power play. Cyprus banking was a favorite for Russian money laundering.
The munitions were stored in an uninsulated metal building. I believe they were actually on the adjoining naval base next door. But no doubt they were detonated. Just like Beirut.
Posted by: reante | Mar 13 2022 1:27 utc | 214
@98
Excellent essay.
I’ll point out that the anarchic movement in North America (Antifa) has often referred to opposing forces as a miscreant other, in need of being wiped out.
I, myself, a moderate right, have been asked to stop breathing.
“Take away his oxygen”, was the phrase.
The propaganda in the west is now such that the roles are reversed.
The Nazi and fascist is now the good hearted nationalist freedom fighter.
And the rebel, and opposition to terror is a Nazi.
That’s not the case here in the bar, of course.
But the juxtaposition of propaganda efforts from the west is astounding.
Posted by: Cadence calls | Mar 13 2022 1:34 utc | 215
I posted this on the Open Thread 2022-23 (Not Ukraine)
1:30 am local time on March 13, 2022:
Iran fires a dozen long-range Fateh 110 ballistic missiles at the US base and consulate in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Videos on this Telegram channel: “>https://t.me/QVINTAAETAS/4435
Follow-ups should go there.
Posted by: Petri Krohn | Mar 13 2022 1:35 utc | 216
And all that’s at the beginning with much more to follow. Crooke sees the danger that Lavrov sees. He also acknowledges the fact that Russia is far from isolated. The Big Problem: What will the West do when reality comes crashing down to snuff the propaganda as is already occurring in Europe and the elites lose? We haven’t speculated on that yet; perhaps we should.
Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 13 2022 1:10 utc | 211
That is a good question. I do expect political collapse. The PMC is so corrupted here it will not be able to reform, and they sure are not going to fix anything. I think Socially the results will vary widely from place to place. Some places will have good local government, and some will just be ungoverned.
It was perceptive of Crooke to bring up mythopoesis, we are going to need some of that, once we stop being “exceptional” we will need to come with new reasons to be. An opportunity for someone versed in US history there.
Posted by: Bemildred | Mar 13 2022 1:39 utc | 217
Posted by: Petri Krohn | Mar 13 2022 1:35 utc | 217
but can we be ure it is realyl Iran not someone trying to frame them ?
Posted by: Arioch | Mar 13 2022 1:39 utc | 218
It’s difficult to write without emotions clouding one’s ability to think clearly, I think everyone here will agree. We live in intense times, for sure.
It seems that a multipolar world is coming to be, as most here are happy to cheerfully announce. “The singular Hegemon is being taken down”, to great choral glee.
But let’s not forget, as Mearsheimer noted in his several recent essays and appearances, that in this world might makes right. Nothing else matters.
Yes, Russia is now emerging as its own region hegemon presenting the world with a new node of the new multipolar world. With that will come a demand for client states and buffer zones. With that will come preferential treatment in its own sphere, with policies and the like that satisfies its needs. Why not, that’s what the UKUSA anglosphere landscape looks like, right?
Soon China will, in its own way, exert its sphere of influence and lay claim to its own territory (it’s already starting doing this anyways with BRI). This is what everyone here wants to see, of course; a dethroning of the singular entity that is the Western grip called financial class globalization.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it is a good idea that the US be knocked down to size as it has abused its power for far too long (and that is basically the power to empower the gangsters that run this system here and in Western Europe).
But don’t for a minute think that these new hegemons will be any more virtuous and thoughtful, and any more interested in expanding fundamental human rights than the current Western flavor now destined to be in retreat from the many corners of the globe.
Sure! I hope that Ukraine “de-Nazifies”, but what does that mean exactly? Does that mean wiping out all avowedly Nazi units like Azov Battalion and C14? Does that include cleaning out from the Ukraine government all active Nazi political operatives — some of which have direct descent from Bandera groupings and their traditional CIA backers over the decades? Ok, but where does it stop? Do you eradicate some or all nationalist groups? And, how does one get labeled a Nazi? Does expressing an associated sympathy get labeled as one? Does one get labeled if you happen to have common cause with the on-the-ground Nazis themselves (for example, does declaring the right to national sovereignty get you labeled a Nazi because the Banderistas share that same position?).
There will be show trials like in times of yore, and examples will be made! People will get called a Nazi who weren’t but got labeled for other reasons and will end up in jail or dead for it…not the first time this kind of betrayal of humanity happened in history, nor will it be the last.
You see my point, right? Maybe I am overstating my concerns, but it certainly doesn’t seem obvious to me where and at what point this ends as a clean operation, as many here appear to have great faith in this as ultimately being some standard exemplar.
A poster earlier said that the Russians will come in, and after eradicting the Nazis, setup a new government and oversee the writing of a new constitution. After which there will be provisions made for keeping Russian forces in various bases across Ukraine’s territory, because (after all) someone has to provide security for Ukraine if Ukraine has no more army of its own, right? They will be like a Roman battalions watching over the native reconstituted police and milita force.
So tell me, how does this reconfiguration and reorientation agenda look any different than what the UKUSA have basically done for the last 70+ years to countless other nations? Do you believe it will be a “kindler gentler” of domination? I have little faith in a guy as brilliant as Putin not to succumb to the well-known human trait: power corrupts.
So let’s call a spade a spade. You all need to come clean and at least admit that in a world of big boys running around, that Ukraine is better off being a meat-puppet state of the Russia than a meat-puppet state of the Western/GNATO alliance. And also admit that you all believe that a big country like Russia has a right for a buffer at the expense of a smaller country; that the “right” to national sovereignty is just b.s.
Might makes right. The old cold war realists (like Mearsheimer) were and continue to be correct in this observation.
But let’s not delude ourselves here. The American/GNATO behemoth shook the hornets nest and caused this to happen. But once Russia basically turns Ukraine into a satellite state, they will never leave it…and plus…the Russians know their history well and they will make sure they don’t lose it like they did the first time around (unlike the dumbass Americans, who simply don’t understand what they read).
In the end, very little to no neutral/sovereign countries will have a chance to exist when this is all over in the next decade.
And yes, I play Twilight Struggle. 🙂
Posted by: Norogene | Mar 13 2022 1:41 utc | 219
I was recently asked by a close friend why I didn’t believe “what all the media are saying about the Russian invasion of Ukraine” and “what about the hospital bombing in Mariupol? It was on all the news channels.” So I have been trying to assemble some online resources that my skeptical friend might trust to help him understand my position and reasoning. In that effort I came across this research paper about the Euromaidan sniper killings that I had not seen before:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266855828_The_Snipers%27_Massacre_on_the_Maidan_in_Ukraine
In other news I hear that the Ukrainian government has said that it will be explicitly monitoring all mobile phone traffic to look for conversations that drift into wrong thinking about the war or perhaps even divulge information that could be deemed a security risk. Seems Kiev believes that there are Russian spies everywhere.
Posted by: the pessimist | Mar 13 2022 1:44 utc | 220
@reante #213:
…Ukrainian famine…
It wasn’t a “Ukrainian” famine. It was a Soviet famine: 1933 rural mortality map, 1933 urban mortality map (in per mille; colored relative to the 1932 overall mortality of 20.2‰).
Posted by: S | Mar 13 2022 1:48 utc | 221
It’s been more than 2 1/2 hours since Telegram reported with video an Iranian missile attack apparently at the US base in Erbil, Iraq and no US news agencies from what I can see have reported on it. Is it not a big deal or are they waiting for instructions of what to say?
Posted by: Musburger | Mar 13 2022 1:50 utc | 222
Please excuse the occasional lapses of incompetent-proof-reading found in my previous post. Like I said, it’s easy to get emotional…
Posted by: Norogene | Mar 13 2022 1:52 utc | 223
Posted by: Norogene | Mar 13 2022 1:41 utc | 220
Thucydides got it right 2500 years ago in his History of the Peloponnesian War and nothing much has changed. Because while technology changes means and modes, the residual human nature remains the same; hence power politics exhibits a surprisingly uniform structure across history.
Augustine, in his City of God, outlined the one dynamic that Thucydides missed. A people goes from oppressed, to fighting for freedom, to obtaining freedom. But the moment it obtains freedom, it begins to want to dominate others. And hence what was was a principled and idealist liberty always progresses, if left unchecked, into empire with all the vices thereof. The libido dominandi–desire to dominate–is a real thing, deeply embedded in human nature.
Posted by: WJ | Mar 13 2022 1:53 utc | 224
S 167
Thanks for the extremely informative reply. You are correct that I know nothing about the particulars as you so capably laid them out. I’m a sketch artist.
I’ll refer you to my last comment on the holodomor. I do believe that what I said about industrialization accords with what you said.
The only outstanding business that we have, then is regarding the charge of racism, and you’re point regarding “genes.” You are saying that these people are racist because they are saying Russians are genetically different when you think you know that Russians are not genetically different.
My response is that their genomes might be identical but, if they represent two distinct (sub)cultures, as I presume they do, and the bulk of their respective gene expressions come from distant geographical areas then they are genetically different… because they are two distinctly different populations if peoples with different genetic expressions as in, different genes.
You can’t act like the accumulation of epigenetic evolution over however many generations isn’t going to matter to two peoples that have been politically set against each other in compacted ecologies and are forced to compete with each other.
You saying your shit don’t stink or what? What’s the deal here? You’ve never othered anybody? Dunbar’s Number doesn’t apply to you?
Posted by: reante | Mar 13 2022 1:56 utc | 225
S 222
Understood regarding Soviet famine. Thanks for the correction.
Posted by: reante | Mar 13 2022 1:58 utc | 226
Here’s an interesting take on the MSM propaganda campaign. Check it out.
Ian Kummer [NOTE: Appears to be the same guy as the below profile from the company.]
I am retired from the army and now blog about current events, politics, and history. I also am writing several fictional stories in science fiction. I have ten years of experience in corporate and government media relations.
Ian Michael; Founder of Reading Junkie and Author, initial director of IMK Publishing, Inc:
I’ve done roughly nine years of multi-media journalism for all three components of the US Army (Active, National Guard, Reserve), working in numerous states and overseas in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait. I did a little bit of everything, from photography, a fair bit of news writing, and video packages like the one embedded below.
The War in Ukraine is a War on Our Minds
March 11, 2022 by Ian Kummer
https://readingjunkie.com/2022/03/11/the-war-in-ukraine-is-a-war-on-our-minds/
I need to finally comment on the torrent of fake news barraging our minds since the beginning of the Russian “invasion” of Ukraine. I know that the majority of these videos and photos are fake, and I have the credentials to back that statement. We are witnessing the single biggest disinformation campaign ever, and I would really like to know how much it cost, in billions USD. We’re probably spending more on this information war than all participants in World War II combined, and I’m not exaggerating.
So here’s my take on the bullshit and why it’s bullshit.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 13 2022 2:00 utc | 227
WJ 225
More succinctly put than I could. Thank you.
What I don’t get is how people really think this is going to turn into a vast improvement for the Ukrainians. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Do people really think the new Russian managers are going to be more virtuous and respectful than the current evil-Empire? I have little faith this will be the case, but I really hope I am wrong. There’s too much suffering.
Posted by: Norogene | Mar 13 2022 2:04 utc | 228
It’s been more than 2 1/2 hours since Telegram reported with video an Iranian missile attack apparently at the US base in Erbil, Iraq and no US news agencies from what I can see have reported on it. Is it not a big deal or are they waiting for instructions of what to say?
Posted by: Musburger | Mar 13 2022 1:50 utc | 223
I’ve seen a claim on twitter that Iran hit some Mossad bases there in Erbil.
Posted by: Bemildred | Mar 13 2022 2:09 utc | 229
“Health purposes” according to the cookie monster.
Posted by: Stonebird | Mar 12 2022 19:23 utc | 87
In the same manner, Integrity Initiative focused on integrity: how to eliminate it.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Mar 13 2022 2:13 utc | 230
Russians, with are streak for dark humour, seemingly enjoy the times.
https://twitter.com/immort5/status/1502682230845579265
Posted by: Arioch | Mar 13 2022 2:16 utc | 231
A bit out of context. Clearly, the biolabs under Pentagon sponsorship addressed the issue how to reduce excessively good health in the target function, like Integrity Initiative more successfully contributed to the elimination of vestiges of integrity in some nooks of the media, Labour Party etc.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Mar 13 2022 2:16 utc | 232
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 12 2022 21:37 utc | 128
Something’s wrong. All my posts are disappearing.
I have found that if you spend too much time on the page trying to post something massive it never makes it onto the page. It is probably some timeout feature in the software of the site.
Compose on a word processor and then cut and paste it over. Sometimes you have to close out the site and come back. I always flush my records upon close as that can be set up in the browser with a click. That forces a total renewing of the page instead of pulling it up out up cache when you return.
Posted by: circumspect | Mar 13 2022 2:18 utc | 233
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 12 2022 21:41 utc | 134
Now the US will make an agreement with Venezuela and Iran. They can buy out Venezuelan light crude with a crazy discount.
The mention of Venezuelan light crude should tell you straight away that it’s BS.
Posted by: Cossack | Mar 13 2022 2:18 utc | 234
This from Politico:
“Michel, along with the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, announced a proposal to increase by another €500 million the EU contribution to military support for Ukraine through an off-budget fund called the European Peace Facility. Both men gave the impression that leaders had approved the plan.”
You have to admire the straight faces. European Peace Facility!!! and the last sentence is magnificent.
No wonder the ‘West’ wins all the time when it is led by such honest, moral leaders of impeccable integrity and transparent policy making.
Posted by: digital dinosaur | Mar 13 2022 2:20 utc | 235
Link: https://www.politico.eu/article/summit-leader-eu-redraw-russia-war-ukraine/
Posted by: digital dinosaur | Mar 13 2022 2:24 utc | 236
Posted by: Musburger | Mar 13 2022 1:50 utc | 223
Fox did: https://www.foxnews.com/world/missile-strike-near-us-consulate-in-erbil-iraq-no-american-casualties-reported
CNN reportedly did too, on TV, but can not see it on their www site
Posted by: Arioch | Mar 13 2022 2:29 utc | 237
Posted by: digital dinosaur | Mar 13 2022 2:20 utc | 236
Precious, indeed. Orwell would envy
Posted by: Arioch | Mar 13 2022 2:31 utc | 238
it was Qasem Soleimanis birthday march 11th… so, maybe the idea of iran firing the missiles into erbil are true… anniversary of soleimani’s birthday. was friday, not sunday though…
Posted by: james | Mar 13 2022 2:35 utc | 239
Posted by: circumspect | Mar 13 2022 2:18 utc | 234
There is a timeout feature but it notifies you of that when you try to post.
I do usually use a text editor to compose a post if it’s a larger post. For short posts I don’t always do that.
Anyway, the issue was my own stupidity – I was on the wrong page looking for the post!
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 13 2022 2:41 utc | 240
> Posted by: S | Mar 13 2022 1:48 utc | 222
There are some sources who claim that was not so much a famine how poisoning.
From my memory, claims were:
1) USA was somehow buying ergot from Ukraine for some medical purposes, but they complained and stopped those years, it was somehow of bad quality
2) people were dying thick not thin, swollen not dry.
The “ukrainian famine” is almost always illustrated y photos from American or Soviet famine of 1920-s
3) sometimes in Ukraine people “died of famine” were found when their cattle, locked in sheds, was crying from hunger loud
4) people were mostly dying (or at least registered dying) in summer, not winter
5) Ukraine has plenty of rivers, lakes and even sea shores. Reportedly fish export from Ukraine to other USSR part was orihibited
6) reportedly surge of toddlers mortality, which could be explained by ergot poisoning of semolina (still popular to feed kids among parents, not mong kids though)
7) peasants reportedly liked to play tricks with cooperatives (kolkhozes): form them, get state loans, then disband them before gathering ripes, without paying loans back. Reportedly, that was causing governtments to make laws more and mroe strict. Howeverthe mores individualistic-thinking people still did not pay loans back. They instead hid harvests and declared it mostly lost and loan to be written off. But you can not properly keep harvest, safe and dry, when you are consealing it from every check. Reportedly, contributed to ergot poisoning.
8) the same famine was in western ukraine then part of Poland not USSR
Posted by: Arioch | Mar 13 2022 2:45 utc | 241
reante@213
You miss the point: it was not western historians poring over mortality tables who ‘discovered’ the famine in Ukraine. The famine, part of a much wider famine, was well known. What is novel about the “Holodomor” charge is that it blamed Stalin, and communists generally not for incompetence in managing the agricultural sector during ‘collectivisation’ but of deliberately targeting Ukrainians because…
Nor were the people discovering this historians, they were propagandists working for the CIA and the Foreign Office, using some old claims made by Goebbels in the 30s to attack communism.
As to whether or not there are ‘innocents’ that is irrelevant. The relevant point is that the Soviet government had no motive to starve Ukrainians to death- the Ukraine of those days which had quite different borders was an integral part of the Soviet Union. Its population was an important contributor to the state’s strength. The survivors of the famine fought in the Red Army and resisted the German invasion.
This is not a scenario which appeals to the Nazi Banderites: their version of history has Ukrainians and Russians hating each other, with Ukrainians rallying to Hitler and massacring Slavs, Jews, Poles and communists of every kind. In the Bandera mythology Ukrainians volunteered for the SS and took Auschwitz Guard duties as part of a sacred racial crusade against barbarous Russia, Communism etc. In exile, in north America this history includes the re-writing of Famine history along the lines Goebbels had suggested.
You choose which Ukraine to believe in: the Bandera version appeals to you. Not to me.
Posted by: bevin | Mar 13 2022 2:46 utc | 242
Cynthia Chung writes a profoundly beautiful piece:
Germany’s Stockholm Syndrome and the Firing of Valery Gergiev
This is a must read if you seek to understand the roots of freedom, how it has been stolen and the champions of freedom’s restoration. An extract follows but evry beautifuuly crafted paragraph in this text is to be savoured:
Although much of the witch-hunt against Russian artists, performers of beauty and optimism, is clearly an attack on Russian culture, where now even Russian art will be subjected to censorship for the mere fact that it is Russian, with the goal of causing shame and humiliation for merely being Russian. The loss is not one sided and the greatest loser in all of this will not be the Russian people.
As seen in the historical case of Germany, any artist that is a vehicle for beauty and optimism is considered a threat to the status quo within a system of empire. For it is beauty and optimism which allows a people, a culture, to find the courage to oppose the shackles of the censors, and dare to fight for liberty. For if one recognises the sanctity that lies within all human life, the unnatural bondage and humiliation of that life becomes intolerable. Thus, when a people, a culture, would rather die to fight for this liberty from empire than live a life of drudgery, forever the servant of another; this is obviously unsustainable to the status quo and an empire will always seek to crush such a spirit.
Thus, any culture, any art that represents such an idea, is a threat to the western system of our present day.
This is a history lesson to teach to your self and your critics and mostly, your children.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 13 2022 2:58 utc | 243
Oh, also…
Reportedly at that time West only agreed to sell something to USSR if paid by wheat. No any other payments were accepted.
In 1931 Kremlin decided to only export 10% of planned – and probably contracted – amount. In 1932 wheat export was ceased and import (from Persia) started.
This while West shrieked about unreliable treachery commies breaking contracts. Like they do today about Russia’s gas and oil.
—
The topic is so politicized that it seems little reliable data can be found. The claims above are sometimes inconsistent with one another, describing different processes that could later be named Golodomor…
Posted by: Arioch | Mar 13 2022 2:59 utc | 244
I’ve been reading some explosive rumors circulating online and the world just turned upside down for me. I feel like someone just killed my spirit.
OMG.
Posted by: Circe | Mar 13 2022 3:24 utc | 245
here is another example – mh 17… what the fuck happened there?
james 103
Of all the possible things I am hoping, once and for all, for a resolution to this issue. An anti-aircraft missile launch from a lone Buk vehicle on a clear day in a very flat landscape means visible launch from all angles for miles and minutes. But no eye witnesses, and no one notices until the plane pieces fall on the ground. Then the found and offered black-boxes are refused to be retrieved by the West, until Malaysia (who subsequently get shut out of the findings proceedings) figures out it is easy to access the site via Russia. Then we are bombarded with dubious information originated by Bellingcat (what was that with Bellingcat mentioned in the UN sec council as source in the recent Uke bio bizzo), who if you believed then, proceeded to completely show how fake it was with the Syria chemical business.
Yes I would love to see the Russians take all they can from the Ukranian BRU(is it?)intelligence service, and any and all information that will lead to the confirmation that Ukrainian forces (whether rogue or not) were responsible for this. Russia needs to do this to clear its name and we need to have it because I’m tired of this BS.
Posted by: YY | Mar 13 2022 3:24 utc | 246
https://multipolarista.com/2022/03/11/mexico-president-amlo-european-parliament/
Mexico’s President AMLO condemns EU Parliament as ‘corrupt reactionary coup-plotters
the article includes AMLO’s letter to the EU parliament
Posted by: mastameta | Mar 13 2022 3:26 utc | 247
You choose which Ukraine to believe in: the Bandera version appeals to you. Not to me.
bevin 243
Not a historian and no dog in the fight. But Ukraine was Soviet, Georgia was Soviet, Russia was Soviet, Belarus was Soviet, if you were otherwise in Eastern Europe you could have been occupied by instead of being Soviet. Besides, Stalin was Georgian.
Posted by: YY | Mar 13 2022 3:39 utc | 248
Posted by: Circe | Mar 13 2022 3:24 utc | 246 Did you leaving us hanging on purpose? Please elaborate.
Posted by: macmuir | Mar 13 2022 3:40 utc | 249
I am reading again Peter Scholl-Latour’s book about Russia “Russland im Zangengriff” Russia in a Vise (or Russia in pliers grip), with undertitle “Putins Imperium zwischen Nato, China und Islam” – Propylaen Verlag, 2006. It is insightful, educational, ‘must read’ book, but only for readers proficient in German. He describes very well the history of modern Ukraine, the first attempt to take it over by the Western powers, mainly USA in 2004, the machinations of diverse oligarchs, CIA, US State Department, and he mentions the “hundreds of millions of dollars” which the USA have spent to subvert the political system in Ukraine. (he was off the mark with that estimation, Nuland openly admitted in 2014 or so, that 5 Billion US dollars were spent in Ukraine).
It is clear from his book, that the people in Ukraine up to the time the book was published, were terribly disunited. There was no political unity, no democracy to speak of. And it puzzles me, what and how it happened that there is now, about 20 years later, such a seeming unity in the war against Russia. Is the Ukraine military so united also? I expected it to splinter and disband earlier.
Posted by: bystander 04 | Mar 13 2022 3:50 utc | 250
Posted by: YY | Mar 13 2022 3:39 utc | 249
“Besides, Stalin was Georgian.”
To add to that:
Krushchev was Ukrainian.
Breshnev – was alternately described as Ukrainian or Russian.
Andropov – Nobody knows what he was as his birth details were falsified.
Chernenko – Siberian of Ukrainian origin
Gorbachev – Mixed Russian/Ukrainian
Yeltsin – Ethnic Russian
Not sure I understand why Russia gets the entire blame for the clusterfuck that resulted from the USSR.
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Mar 13 2022 3:57 utc | 251
Posted by: YY | Mar 13 2022 3:39 utc | 249
“Besides, Stalin was Georgian.”
To add to that:
Krushchev was Ukrainian.
Breshnev – was alternately described as Ukrainian or Russian.
Andropov – Nobody knows what he was as his birth details were falsified.
Chernenko – Siberian of Ukrainian origin
Gorbachev – Mixed Russian/Ukrainian
Yeltsin – Ethnic Russian
Not sure I understand why Russia gets the entire blame for the clusterfuck that resulted from the USSR.
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Mar 13 2022 3:57 utc | 252
Posted by: Circe | Mar 13 2022 3:24 utc | 246
I know how you feel, I remember how it hit me when I learned elves are not real.
Stop being a tease and do tell?
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Mar 13 2022 4:02 utc | 253
@248, love the EU are flunkies of coup plotters part of the Mexico’s Presidents thoughts. Couldn’t have put it better, though the primary instigators are of course the UK wagging the US dog.
Posted by: Oh | Mar 13 2022 4:10 utc | 254
https://news.antiwar.com/2022/03/11/us-official-says-many-russian-warplanes-are-firing-missiles-into-ukraine-from-inside-russian-airspace/
Did not realise that Ukraine still has 56 operational warplanes and that they fly 5 times daily.
Would have thought the Russians may still be interested in taking them out, even with ground to air missiles by the ongoing operation in Ukraine.
Posted by: digital dinosaur | Mar 13 2022 4:19 utc | 255
Posted by: digital dinosaur | Mar 13 2022 4:19 utc | 256
… the US official said Ukraine, which has 56 operational warplanes, has been flying between five and 10 sorties on average each day.
Oh, it’s a US Official!
God’s own Truth then!
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Mar 13 2022 4:33 utc | 256
And now for something very different, especially for those who want some light relief:
Lez Luthor: Illusion Warfare Report: The Road to Ukraine.
Englishman calling himself Lez Luthor enters Ukraine, ventures on to Kiev and discovers the entire city seems to be a Hollywood movie set.
Lights, camera, action … KABOOM! CRASH! AAARGH! REFUGEES!
Posted by: Jen | Mar 13 2022 5:04 utc | 257
Please, Circe
I must know!
What dreadful internet rumors
have spun your delicates into such a mess?
Posted by: Cadence calls | Mar 13 2022 5:51 utc | 258
Interesting video!
Published yesterday 13.45 by the Russian Ministry of Defense .
The landing of tactical troops of the Airborne Forces of the RF Armed Forces and the capture of one of the airfields in Ukraine.
https://z.mil.ru/spec_mil_oper/news/more.htm?id=12412698@egNews
(Not checked, if this video link has shown here earlier.)
Posted by: k | Mar 13 2022 6:05 utc | 259
“Fascists need scapegoats, particularly within their own population …
… but that doesn’t mean that jews are somehow unpalatable to the sin of fascism; or incapable of cooperating with fascists (nazis included) so long as jews aren’t being scapegoated themselves.”—Posted by: Misotheist | Mar 12 2022 22:15 utc | 152
Eh?
Posted by: Laurence | Mar 13 2022 6:22 utc | 260
“The chiefs of the UK’s MI5 and MI6 have warned Home Secretary Priti Patel against easing visa requirements for Ukrainian refugees, purportedly due to the risk they could include Daesh* militants and mafia-linked criminals, the Daily Mail reports.” https://sputniknews.com/20220313/uk-security-chiefs-reportedly-warn-priti-patel-against-open-door-policy-toward-ukrainian-refugees-1093822894.html … 🤣`
Posted by: Laurence | Mar 13 2022 6:30 utc | 261
“People talk about Poland being ‘more generous’ than the UK but it’s not that – their border has ceased to exist in any meaningful fashion, so we ha —…‡ https://sputniknews.com/20220313/uk-security-chiefs-reportedly-warn-priti-patel-against-open-door-policy-toward-ukrainian-refugees-1093822894.html
wtaf?
Posted by: Laurence | Mar 13 2022 6:33 utc | 262
There has been relatively little focus on the first few hours of the war, intentionally so from the point of view of Western perception managers, but we who are in opposition might ponder the consequences of the Russian stand-off demonstration. As I understand it, they obliterated most of the Ukrainian military infrastucture and heavy-duty hardware with precision missile strikes immediately after the the speech of Putin. The message is: Russia can do the same to any NATO country in Europe. The real Western militaries will know that, and they will have informed the top decision-makers (the “military experts” in the “universites” and “think-tanks” are purely political commissars and their output is propaganda).
Maybe the endgame is not all that politically ambitious. Demilitarize, establish the friendly Donbass states; similar friendly states of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia may be necessary. Hang the nutzie terrorists and biowarfare collaborators. There are lists of names of people who should be delivered from Kharkov, Odessa, Kiev, Lviv, for trials in Donetsk or Moscow.
But then, the rest of the Ukraine can do what they want. Only, they can have no missiles or heavy weaponry or military bases of any kind, unless they be Russian ones. They can have gay parades and dances and hate Russia and emigrate (“flee”) to the West, fulfilling the European destiny of Ukraine. But they are not allowed to be a threat. Not allowed NATO cooperation. Real pacification, without occupation, may be possible with the modern stand-off capabilities developed by Russia. Implicitly, the same goes for post-1997 NATO, with or without the realization of force.
The denazification of Lviv may be the hardest part. I have some fear, I think Scott Ritter hinted, that when the rest is done, we may see a different type of campaign against Western Ukraine, unless they surrender. There, the Western war propaganda will have some basis in reality.
Posted by: veto | Mar 13 2022 6:50 utc | 263
@Barofsky | Mar 13 2022 0:00 utc | 186
Thank you, excellent post. In my opinion you are correct about Climate Change/Covid19/War being part of the same FEAR scenario and even MOA fell for it, including most comments.
The laws needed to control us are now all in place, so they no longer need the Virus! Why do think that overnight, the fucking thing virtually disappeared, not from the world of course, but from the psyops war being waged on our brains. And ‘conveniently’ along comes Ukraine. Do the math!
Precisely.
Posted by: Norwegian | Mar 13 2022 7:10 utc | 264
bevin 243
“You miss the point: it was not western historians poring over mortality tables who ‘discovered’ the famine in Ukraine. The famine, part of a much wider famine, was well known. What is novel about the “Holodomor” charge is that it blamed Stalin, and communists generally not for incompetence in managing the agricultural sector during ‘collectivisation’ but of deliberately targeting Ukrainians because…”
The famine may have been well known in USSR but was the cause fairly represented by the USSR, or did it take the West to represent it fairly (while also propagandizing it)? Is forced collectivization that causes famine really mismanagement? We’re the production dislocations resulting from dekulakization incompetent mismanagement or should we call that something else?
“You choose which Ukraine to believe in: the Bandera version appeals to you. Not to me.
Posted by: bevin | Mar 13 2022 2:46 utc | 243”
The Bandera version doesn’t appeal to me. That’s straw manning. But the Bandera version exists for a valid reason, whatever internal inconsistencies it may contain.
Posted by: reante | Mar 13 2022 7:13 utc | 265
Latest MoD briefing…
Briefing by Russian Defence Ministry
Units of the Russian Armed Forces advanced up to 14 kilometers in a day. During the offensive, control was established over the southern districts of Blagodatnoye, Vladimirovka, Pavlovka and Nikolskoye settlements.
In Nikolskoye, the militants of Aidar national battalion, having equipped firing positions right on the territory of the Orthodox Holy Dormition Nikolo-Vasilievsky Monastery, held about 300 civilians and monks hostage.
During the liberation of this settlement by Russian units, some of the nationalists were wiped out, the rest were scattered. The hostages and buildings of the monastery were not harmed.
The grouping of the People’s Militia troops of the Lugansk Republic, continuing offensive actions, completely blocked Borovskoye and gained a foothold in the northern districts of Popasnaya city.
In Severodonetsk, units of the Lugansk People’s Republic blocked the eastern and southern parts of the city.
Aviation and air defence of the Russian Aerospace Forces shot down 1 Su-24 aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force in Lyubimovka area and 2 unmanned aerial vehicles.
188 assets of the Ukrainian military infrastructure were hit by operational-tactical, army and unmanned aircraft, including: 4 control points and communication centres, 2 Buk-M1 anti-aircraft missile systems, 1 guidance and target designation radar station, 3 multiple launch rocket systems, 1 electronic warfare station, 3 ammunition depots and 56 areas of military equipment concentration.
In total, 3,687 assets of military infrastructure of Ukraine were neutralized during the operation.
Destroyed: 128 unmanned aerial vehicles, 1,194 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 121 multiple rocket launchers, 443 field artillery and mortars, 991 units of special military vehicles.
#MoD #Russia #Ukraine #Briefing
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 13 2022 7:14 utc | 266
Russia’s “end-game”.
1. Crimea recogized as part of Russia.
2. The Republics of Donetsk & Luhansk recognised as Independent of Ukraine.
3. So what about the Southern Areas of Kherson & Zaporizhzhia south of the Dnieper that connect Crimea to Donetsk?
I fail to see why it would be a good idea to just hand this back to Ukraine. This area of southern Kherson & Zaporizhzhia also contacts the entire northern coast of the Azov Sea.
Keeping this area under Russian control allows the land-bridge to Crimea and allows full control of the Azov Sea.
Why give it back?
It so happens that the capital of Kherson (which is also named Kherson) is on the northern bank of the Dnieper and the capital of Zaporizhzhia (also named Zaporizhzhia) is at the northern end of the Zaporizhzhia oblast.
If you combine Southern Kherson & Southern Zaporizhzhia into a new region with the capital at Melitopol in southern Zaporizhzhia and rename that region as Melitopol – you can then also annex that to Crimea & Donetsk – I don’t see why you’d just hand it back.
The other parts of Central Ukraine – yes, better not to occupy these areas if it’s possible not to – but this particular area – why would you do the hard work of winning it and then just hand it back?
Makes no sense.
So in essence – Southern Kherson & Southern Zaporizhzhia (& even Far-South-Eastern Southern Mykolaiv) should form the new Melitopol Oblast connecting Crimea & Donetsk.
Posted by: Julian | Mar 13 2022 7:18 utc | 267
@ Barofsky & Norwegian 264 *supra*
595 people were killed by heat in B.C. this summer, new figures from coroner show https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-heat-dome-sudden-deaths-revised-2021-1.6232758 / 1,619 people likely caught COVID-19 in B.C. hospitals and 274 of them have died https://bc.ctvnews.ca/at-least-1-533-got-covid-19-in-b-c-hospitals-and-189-of-them-have-died-report-1.5681710
Get bent.
Posted by: Laurence | Mar 13 2022 7:27 utc | 268
The republics are continuing to build criminal cases against the Ukrainian nationalists…
Emergency statement of the official DPR People’s Militia representative on 12.03.2022
Armed formations of Ukraine continue to purposefully shell residential areas of the Republic, as a result of which civilians suffer, vital infrastructure is destroyed.
As a result of a direct hit by a projectile in the control room 42 of the State Fire and Emergency Service of the city of DOKUCHAYEVSK, 10 employees of the DPR Ministry of Emergency Situations were injured, 1 of them has a serious injury.
As a result of the shelling of the Kievsky and Kuibyshevsky districts of DONETSK, the pavilions of the Mayak market and the house along 17b Agrotekhnicheskaya St. caught fire.
Additional information about the victims and destruction is being specified.
Materials on the fact of the injury of employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and damage to infrastructure will be transferred to representatives of international human rights organizations, as well as to the DPR General Prosecutor’s Office for inclusion in criminal cases initiated against the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Posted by: Julian | Mar 13 2022 7:18 utc | 268
Again, there will be no “occupation.” Russia will “capture” (to use Lira’s term) all of Ukraine out to the Polish border. It will “reorient” the government by a new Constitution and new elections, “reorient” the Ukrainian military to provide for that government’s defense, eliminate every neo-Nazi they can find and the Constitution will ban the neo-Nazi parties and militias – then Russia will leave.
Whatever local regions want to secede from the central government is up to them, although I believe Russia would prefer all of them, possibly even including Donbass, to reintegrate with the new government. But Russia doesn’t really care. All that matters is that the central government is either neutral or pro-Russian, preferably the latter – and I’m sure measures will be taken to insure that. Because that enables Russia to then place strategic weapons in Ukraine to counter the US weapons in Poland and Romania. That’s the whole point of this exercise – it’s part of the “military-technical measures” Russia promised.
OFF Topic:
RT Telegram channel is reporting that Iranian news says the missiles fired at Erbil were targeting Israeli secret bases.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 13 2022 7:30 utc | 269
Elijah M. has quite a different take on this rocket attack in Erbil, Iraq.
Western media playing it up as an attack against US, while Magnier says it’s all about Iran and Israel
AP reports ‘as many a 12 missiles’… But “no casualties”
hmmmm
Reuters does say, “…An Iranian state-TV correspondent based in Iraq said that the missiles were aimed at “secret Israeli bases,”….
https://twitter.com/ejmalrai/status/1502889673676439553
#Iran launched six precision missiles Fateh-110 Iranian missiles against a Mossad base in #Erbil #Iraq in retaliation to #Israel killing of 2 Iranian officers in #Syria. No official statements were delivered by either side. These are “messages” both sides understand.
Posted by: michaelj72 | Mar 13 2022 7:37 utc | 270
# 260
I add another link to my earlier post, if you can’t open z.mil.ru (opens with some (free) VPN, which has a server in Russia).
It’s also at least on RT page ( among other RT-stuff) on odysee, and quite unique in these days, being from the Russian site.
The landing of tactical troops of the Airborne Forces of the RF Armed Forces and the capture of one of the airfields in Ukraine.
https://z.mil.ru/spec_mil_oper/news/more.htm?id=12412698@egNews OR
https://odysee.com/@RT:fd/airfield_12:8
Posted by: k | Mar 13 2022 7:54 utc | 271
Many barflies will be familiar with the Pulitzer Prize winning book ‘The Guns of August’.
Few will know of ‘Germany and the Next War’.
https://www.fulltextarchive.com/page/Germany-and-the-Next-War1/
What a predictable tragedy which only demonstrates the abject failure of diplomacy and the stupidity of entangling alliances.
My great uncle died at Lone Pine in Gallipoli, a real ANZAC there is no grave. He was in the mixed Australian and NZ Brigade of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. What a tragedy for our family.
When will we ever learn.
Posted by: Paul | Mar 13 2022 8:33 utc | 272
Posted by: Paul | Mar 13 2022 8:33 utc | 273
My grandfather was at Gallipoli. He was in the second wave and did not die. He did however cop mustard gas in France
Posted by: watcher | Mar 13 2022 8:43 utc | 273
Magneto
Genetically targeted magnetic control of the nervous system
a protein that remotely controls brain and behaviour
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4846560/
Posted by: ld | Mar 13 2022 8:46 utc | 274
@ uncle tungsten | Mar 13 2022 2:58 utc | 244
Thanks for the link to Cynthia Chung
However, most importantly, the Germans would do well in remembering that it was never their choice to join NATO, but that West Germany was an occupied country by the UK, USA and France from 1945 to 1955. And that this direct occupation only ended after West Germany agreed to join NATO in 1955. It was never Germany’s choice but rather was an offer by gun point for a piece, a crumb of “liberty.”
And not only once but twice, 35 years later…
“Independence” on a short leash.
Posted by: Weimar | Mar 13 2022 9:02 utc | 275
Posted by: watcher | Mar 13 2022 8:43 utc | 274
Onya mate.
Posted by: Paul | Mar 13 2022 9:03 utc | 276
The largest death claims wrt Holodomor come from the method of extrapolating from previous birth rates. A similar method was used to claim Uighur “genocide” (actually, lowered birth rates). Or actually, claims like “20 million” are just made up (and impossible).
Much lower claims generally come from studying written records. Now we’re not even in the millions. But these are often dismissed as incomplete.
The claim that there was a specific plan to genocide Ukrainians often comes from a translation of a speech made by Stalin regarding collectivization. Stalin was very colorful in describing how communists would overcome resistance from landlords. But this was fiery rhetoric, not a plan for genocide of Ukrainians. No “genocide plan” has ever been unearthed.
Of course, if you oppose socialism, communism, etc, you may be inclined to believe the forced collectivization was ghastly or even a genocide in and of itself. Soviet defenders say that famines like the Holodomor were regular before collectivization but not afterwards.
And there is no question it was a particularly bad year all over, not just in Ukraine.
Posted by: Charles Peterson | Mar 13 2022 9:08 utc | 277
Re: Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 13 2022 7:30 utc | 270
I do not see the Russians going all the way to the Polish border, or Slovakian or Hungarian borders either for that matter.
Posted by: Julian | Mar 13 2022 9:11 utc | 278
The level of pervasiveness of the propaganda has risen to the level where it’s now embedded in my daily tools!
Here embedded in Amazon’s infrastructure code documentation I find this:
Additional terms of use for users from Russia and Belarus
By using the code provided in this repository you agree with the following:
Russia has illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and brought the war in Donbas followed by full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Russia has brought sorrow and devastations to millions of Ukrainians, killed hundreds of innocent people, damaged thousands of buildings, and forced several million people to flee.
Putin khuylo!
https://github.com/terraform-aws-modules/terraform-aws-eks
What next ? Will I be compiling Linux kernels only to find my error messages interspersed with calls identifying Russian malfeasance as the cause of all bugs!??
No wonder all the latest technology coming out of these shitty western “Big Tech” houses is flaky convoluted garbage that can’t pass a performance test let alone a security audit.
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Mar 13 2022 9:25 utc | 279
Posted by: Julian | Mar 13 2022 9:11 utc | 279
“I do not see the Russians going all the way to the Polish border, or Slovakian or Hungarian borders either for that matter.”
As suggested by veto @ | Mar 13 2022 6:50 utc | 264, Russia’s shotgun defense may be sufficient deterrence to further NATO intrigues in Ukraine. On the other hand, denazification may require the `Moskals’ of UkroNazi’s desiring. That is precisely why they’re offering themselves as targets up close & personal. IMO. Attendant implications follow.
Posted by: Laurence | Mar 13 2022 9:47 utc | 280
Today, in the morning news at 07:00 our public broadcaster in Brussels, the “capital” of the European Union, once again spread a piece of troubling propaganda. Litterally:
“The Russian Defense Ministry admits that the humanitarian situation in several cities in Ukraine is catastrophic. Several evacuation attempts at the port city of Mariupol failed again yesterday, according to Ukraine because Russia is blocking convoys of civilians.”
The channel does report the catastrophic humanitarian situation, not that Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias are preventing the evacuation of civilians and consequently using them as human shields. Later, the channel goes even further: it put several reporters who operate from behind the battle line, on the stand to confirm, explicitly or implicitly, the narrative that Russia is hindering the evacuation of civilians.
Our public broadcaster apparently feels that listeners are stupid. Surely Russia has every interest in evacuating innocent civilians from the battlefield. This false reporting comes on top of the infuriating censorship of all media that can expose the other side of the situation. Western media bear a huge responsibility for the war dragging on.
Posted by: Paul-Robert | Mar 13 2022 9:49 utc | 281
Posted by: S | Mar 12 2022 19:55 utc | 98
First, thanks to S for that enlightening article and also for the reply @ 2022 22:52 utc | 167.
Then, thanks also to Charles Peterson | Mar 13 2022 9:08 utc | 278, as well as Misotheist @ various places.
1. I have a relative in the US, a fundy Christian, who some years ago brought up Lysenko. At the time we were
arguing evolution but I would appreciate any comments on Lysenko’s role in the famine.
2. The Greanville Post had an article last year about the US & GB not accepting gold or other forms of payment for
goods which the the USSR sorely needed for industrialization in the early ‘30s. It put the USSR in a quandary regarding their
wheat, which was acceptable as payment. (Sanctions not a new idea:)
US says no to gold
The author is not identified, it just says ‘Relayed by Boyko Irina Lvovna’ and I have not been able to find out more.
Posted by: waynorinorway | Mar 13 2022 9:58 utc | 282
Posted by: Julian | Mar 13 2022 9:11 utc | 279
I do, for the simple reason that de-Nazification requires it. They have to at least go to Lvov, so they might as well go all the way. There is also the issue of closing the borders to CIA-infiltrated insurgents and weapons transfers – which aren’t going to stop just because Russia wins the war.
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 13 2022 10:03 utc | 283
Posted by: Weimar | Mar 13 2022 9:02 utc | 276
You make a good point.
Posted by: Paul | Mar 13 2022 10:03 utc | 284
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Mar 13 2022 9:25 utc | 280
github. LOL.
Posted by: too scents | Mar 13 2022 10:09 utc | 285
“The severity and geographical extent of the famine, the sharp decline in exports in 1932- 1933, seed requirements, and the chaos in the Soviet Union in these years, all lead to the conclusion that even a complete cessation of exports would not have been enough to prevent famine. This situation makes it difficult to accept the interpretation of the famine as the result of the 1932 grain procurements and as a conscious act of genocide. The harvest of 1932 essentially made a famine inevitable.
“Although the low 1932 harvest may have been a mitigating circumstance, the regime was still responsible for the deprivation and suffering of the Soviet population in the early 1930s. The data presented here provide a more precise measure of the consequences of collectivization and
forced industrialization than has previously been available; if anything, these data show that the effects of those policies were worse than has been assumed. They also, however, indicate that the famine was real, the result of a failure of economic policy, of the “revolution from above,” rather than of a “successful” nationality policy against Ukrainians or other ethnic groups. The data presented here should contribute to a reevaluation not only of the famine, but also of the Soviet economy in the First Five-Year Plan and afterward.”
Mark B. Tauger, ‘The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933’, Slavic Review 2017, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2500600
Posted by: ruskin | Mar 13 2022 10:09 utc | 286
@Arch Bungle | Mar 13 2022 9:25 utc | 280
https://github.com/terraform-aws-modules/terraform-aws-eks
What next ? Will I be compiling Linux kernels only to find my error messages interspersed with calls identifying Russian malfeasance as the cause of all bugs!??
Let us hope not. In this case, the repo README.md markdown file has been manually modified, the Ukraine propaganda was manually inserted March 11. It was done by someone called by “Anton Babenko”. Details of the change here. Anton Babenko’s github profile: https://github.com/antonbabenko – Apparently he is an “AWS Community Hero”.
Posted by: Norwegian | Mar 13 2022 10:10 utc | 287
A short footnoted essay on the origins of the conflict.
Black Web, Red Tide
The Cold War did not begin the 1940s. The roots of the long struggle to overthrow and permanently neutralize the communist current are found not in the ruins of Europe but in Siberia and Petrograd in the bitter years following the Bolshevik Revolution. The manifold efforts to decapitate socialism and the retrenchment following their failure anticipated every stratagem of the Cold War. Understanding the germination of the deep state requires an intimate examination of this period.
Anglo-French investments in Russia amounted to around $8,000,000,000, or approximately $150,000,000,000 today. In particular, the Caucasian and Ural oil wells controlled by the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company and the interwoven Hoare, Baring, Rothschild, and Hambros banking houses were of enormous value, in addition to the monopoly control over the Russian munitions industry exerted by European arms trusts. Future President Herbert Hoover had profitably invested in eleven Russian oil companies and sat on the board of the Russo-Asiatic Corporation, which controlled an estimated $1,000,000,000 worth of land and industrial assets.¹
Bolshevik-led workers’ committees, as Hoover bitterly notes in his memoirs, passed resolutions dismissing the ownership, dismissing the management, and raising wages 100 percent. The American technical staff were “courteously tendered… a train of sleeping cars and locomotives, with flowers, food and coal aboard, to take them out.”² Later, as director of the American Relief Administration during the Civil War, Hoover would place food supplies at the disposal of White Generals von der Goltz and Yudenitch, going so far as to calculate the amount of food necessary for White forces to march on Petrograd. Yudenitch was supplied with British rifles, cartridges, tanks, and airplanes and was provided intelligence by British Secret Service saboteurs in the Red Army.³
British forces in Turkmenistan aided an uprising of anti-Soviet railway workers and in exchange for military aid were granted exclusive rights to the petroleum and cotton resources in the region by the short-lived government.⁴ Henri Deterding, Managing Director of Royal Dutch-Shell at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, resented the loss of his valuable investments in the Caucasus and financed various White Russian exile organizations as well as revolts in Georgia. Deterding would go on to become a major financial supporter of the NSDAP.⁵
The conclusive victory of the Bolsheviks over White forces triggered an exodus of anti-communist and, often, proto-fascist aristocrats and soldiers to Western Europe, China, Japan, and the Americas. These exiles were received warmly by the defeated Allied interventionists, becoming influential in German and Japanese military circles and occupying key roles in the espionage services of several Baltic and Balkan states. The Aufbau Vereinigung, made up of White exiles in Munich, had a major influence on Hitler and counted Alfred Rosenberg and Erich Ludendorff among its members.⁶ Another member of Aufbau, Boris Brasol, worked for the United States War Trade Board and the Military Intelligence Division. With Harris Ayres Houghton, former head of the Army Intelligence-Gathering Bureau, he translated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.⁷ Brasol and Houghton worked for the private intelligence network operated by Henry Ford and his secretary Ernest Liebold which surveilled Jews, Communists, and Ford’s business opponents. This network employed former Secret Service and military intelligence operatives as well as other White Russian exiles.⁸
Most striking is the continuity and interlock between White and Nazi figures who “took up the inner seats in the American foreign intelligence apparatus at the precise moment that this apparatus was starting to come forward as a major player in the great policy wars of Washington and the world.” The anti-Soviet espionage network associated with the Vlassovite collaborationist army was transferred to the intelligence system of Reinhard Gehlen, which was in turn installed into the inner core of the Central Intelligence Agency.⁹ Gehlen and his Agency backers as well as a web of private sector organizations, especially the Ford and Tolstoy Foundations, trained White exiles and younger Eastern European monarchists and neofascists for clandestine armed missions in the Soviet Union.¹⁰ At the same time, Eastern European and Central Asian Nazi collaborators were trained by American and former Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS officers to act as a private army for the CIA. These units were covertly deployed to Hungary during the 1956 revolt to support the anti-Soviet forces and some would go on to join the Green Berets during the Vietnam War.¹¹
What is understood as the Cold War “deep state” finds its origins not in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War but the Russian Civil War. Moreover, the wartime and postwar institutionalization of previously private intelligence networks was initiated by capitalists who had been directly confronted by workers’ movements at home and abroad. The incorporation of overtly reactionary elements into deep power structures was not a corruption by external enemies but a process guided by a fully aware bourgeoisie and its innumerable collaborators.
Oglesby said that conspiracy is the continuation of normal politics by normal means. One could just as well add that conspiracy is the normal extension of the global reproduction of capitalism through normal means. Before Guatemala and Vietnam and Indonesia were the Atlantic slave trade, the East India Company, enclosure, and the extermination of the indigenous people of the New World. The long, dark night did not begin after Hitler’s defeat, nor is it an ailment foreign to the body of capitalist civilization.
Once again, we come to the clear-eyed declaration of the Red Brigades.
We must not let ourselves be fooled by [the Christian Democrats’] ‘professions of democratic and anti-fascist faith’ which from time to time come from some of the leaders of this party. These professions are made because they respond to the tactical need to keep alive the dialectic between ‘fascism’ and ‘anti-fascism’ which permits the DC to collect votes, making people believe that, as opposed to the ‘fascist’ danger, ‘reformed democracy,’ that is, the imperialist State, is better. The problem of the revolutionary vanguards is to make this whole game clear, striking at hidden nests, connections, connivances, and plans.
Notes
1. Sayers, Michael, and Albert Eugene Kahn. The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War Against Soviet Russia, pp.100–108. Boston: Little, Brown, 1946.
2. Hoover, H. Memoirs, p.105. New York: Macmillan, 1963.
3. Kahn and Sayers, The Great Conspiracy, pp.86–86.
4. Kahn and Sayers, The Great Conspiracy, p.90.
5. Pool, James, and Suzanne Pool. Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler’s Rise to Power 1919–1933, pp.319–324. London: Macdonald and Jane’s, 1978.
6. Kellogg, Michael. The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
7.Baldwin, Neil. Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate, pp.81–82. New York: PublicAffairs, 2001.
8. Logsdon, Jonathan. “Power, Ignorance, and Anti-Semitism: Henry Ford and His War on Jews,” 1999.
9. Oglesby, Carl. The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate and Beyond, pp.38–42. New York: Berkley, 1977.
10. Chester, Eric Thomas. Covert Network: Progressives, the International Rescue Committee, and the CIA, pp.91–129. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1995.
11. Cookridge, E. H. Gehlen: Spy of the Century, p.241, 304–305. New York: Random House, 1972.
https://urbaneguerrilla.medium.com/black-web-red-tide-d71d6acf97df
Posted by: too scents | Mar 13 2022 10:20 utc | 288
Weimar | Mar 13 2022 9:02 utc | 276
Actually you ignore context. Korean War required withdrawal of UK and US troops from Europe and US needed a German Army to face the Soviets so wanted to rearm Germany – but France objected and had voted down Eur Defence Community 1954 after defeat at Dien Bien Phu.
To persuade France to accede to German Rearmament required French control of coal and steel as it also faced a referendum for Saarland to rejoin Germany 1955 referendum (shades of Crimea) with Schumann Plan as an option for French control by pooling coal and steel………this led to Treaty of Rome 1957……
To buy Turkish agreement on NATO as a way to embed German Rearmament since Germany was forbidden from having a General Staff Adenauer was forced to agree to Turkish migrant workers ‘Gastarbeiter’ to relieve unemployment in Anatolia
Posted by: Paul Greenwood | Mar 13 2022 10:43 utc | 289
Just wondering,is this a precursor to biological research labs being exposed and searched in these member countries ? Ie: USA involved labs?
Any thoughts?
SBS news has footage of the Australian air force dropping lethal and non-lethal aid into Ukraine.
Australia is not a NATO country and RF says these supplies would be targeted.
I wonder if the crews understand the circles on the fuselage look like big targets.
The week of the ‘unprecedented’ floods (with no aid for flood victims and only locals to rescue each other) Scomo announced AU$70m lethal aid to UA.
Posted by: Dadda | Mar 13 2022 10:55 utc | 292
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 13 2022 7:30 utc | 270
…Again, there will be no “occupation.” Russia will “capture” (to use Lira’s term) all of Ukraine out to the Polish border. It will “reorient” the government by a new Constitution and new elections, “reorient” the Ukrainian military to provide for that government’s defense, eliminate every neo-Nazi they can find and the Constitution will ban the neo-Nazi parties and militias – then Russia will leave…
You are suggesting a reorientation of government imposed by a military conquest and the garrisoning of troops and hardware. Most people call this occupation. But it doesn’t matter what you call it and for the sake of argument, we can use the term “reorient”, with the quotes. I’m more interested in discussing the practical aspects than value judgments.
Julian @ 7:18 utc | 268 made an interesting comment and implicitly addressed the fact that the main difficulty in administering conquered territory (by “reorienting” its government) is directly related to its size and population. Julian was suggesting holding on to the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts minus the capital urban centres of the north, which is, what, 1M people and 50 000km2 ? That in itself seems like a big bite to chew on.
You, Richard, are suggesting Russia could hold on to the whole of Ukraine, a country of 40 million and over 600 000 km2.
Restraint and professionalism on the Russian side only goes so far and it would be disingenuous to suggest that “liberating” troops would be greeted with rose petals. Even in the case of a largely sympathetic native population (which I doubt), the Empire would have endless opportunities and vast resources to wage a war of resistance. An important aspect to consider is that wholesale destruction is not in the interest of the invading party but is instead an ultimate goal of the sponsors of the defending party. This heavily tilts the balance in their favour.
They see the 1500 km border, the very successful narrative campaign and are probably way ahead of the game and very keen on getting this show on the road. Perhaps the networks are already in place and targets picked out. No doubt the “hotties of the Ukrainian resistance” photo shoots are well underway.
Posted by: robin | Mar 13 2022 11:01 utc | 293
In Syria Russia showed a gentle face. It talked with the other side and it arranged free evacuations for them even when they were surrounded. The goal was not to kill or capture people but to conquer territory.
This made sense. Sure, they would face some of those people again on another front. But not all of them: some were just defending their hometown. There would be a lot less damage. The own troops would suffer less losses and would earlier be ready for the next job. And quicker loss of territory was demotivating for the insurgents.
I am sorry to see this attitude missing in Ukraine. I see lots of fanatism about crushing the neonazi’s in cauldrons but no thinking about the price. Volnovakha is now one big ruin. Mariupol may end up largely in ruins too for the benefit of killing or capturing 2000 Azov soldiers and it is estimated that it will take at least another week to do so. Is that worth the price? Wouldn’t it be better to just offer them free evacuation to Ukrainian held territory?
The same applies to the next cauldron: Severodonets. This is a city of 100,000. Next door Lysychansk has about the same population. So with smaller surrounding places this could become a cauldron that is almost as hard to finish as Mariupol.
Ukraine’s neonazi’s are not different from ISIS in Syria. They too are divided into rather few real fanatics, a bunch of opportunists who joined what they see as the winners and a bunch of sheep. When you marginalize them so that they no longer have power they will become irrelevant again.
Posted by: Wim | Mar 13 2022 11:20 utc | 294
Posted by: robin | Mar 13 2022 11:01 utc | 293
It is quite myopic to consider the conflict limited to Ukraine and its borders.
No easy exit for Japan from Russia’s Sakhalin-2 LNG project
Dilemma between energy security and sanctions to bedevil Tokyo for sometime
TOKYO — Despite Shell exiting a landmark LNG plant that has served as a symbol of cooperation between Tokyo and Moscow, Japanese trading houses Mitsui & Co. and Mitsubishi Corp. are sticking with the Sakhalin-2 project, the source of nearly 10% of Japan’s liquefied natural gas imports.
The situation underscores a dilemma Japan and its companies will increasingly find themselves as the U.S. and Europe pile on more sanctions against Russia.
“Japan’s position on its interests in Sakhalin is greatly different than that of Europe and the U.S.,” an energy executive at one of the trading houses told senior officials at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. A document that was presented included such statements such as: “A hasty withdrawal is dangerous,” and “a withdrawal will benefit Russia and China.”
… https://archive.ph/rDnP5
Ukraine is a single (hot) front in a global conflict.
Posted by: too scents | Mar 13 2022 11:24 utc | 295
“There can be no distinction made between their leadership and population, between bad Putin and poor Russian.” Not sure who made this point (in the comments here) but I’ve been wanting to say that this is just bad strategy! When Clinton condemned Trump supporters as ‘deplorables’ she made the mistake. In any political/military campaign you want to isolate the leader from their supporters, drive a wedge between them to weaken the decision/maker’s popular support. In this case (as w HRC v DT) the actual result is to drive Russians behind Putin. This particularly w regard to the sanctions on art, music, sport etc.
Posted by: Pete | Mar 13 2022 11:33 utc | 296
Escobar
Russia is preparing its counter-sanctions package.
It’s a slow process. Strictly legal. Everything needs to be approved by the Duma.
And yes – they will be painfully asymmetrical.
…….
Putin shot Sheriff Dollar in the head.
Now watch the collapse of global financial markets.
………
Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar is spot on.
The post-1971 racket based on the petrodollar and treasury recycling is over.
‘Bretton Woods II was built on inside money, and its foundations crumbled a week ago when the G7 seized Russia’s FX reserves.’
……….
Biden wants Iranian oil. Israel hits Iranian officers – Iran hits Mossad within US consulate complex…. The US spider getting tangled in its own web of lies.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 13 2022 11:33 utc | 297
@ 297 I should have separated that better. First three are Escobar’s latest tweets, last one is my comment.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 13 2022 11:36 utc | 298
Posted by: circumspect | Mar 13 2022 2:18 utc | 234
Just ctrl-c, reload the page, ctrl-v. It ain’t rocket surgery.
Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 13 2022 11:45 utc | 299
The empire of lies. Also the empire of murder on an industrial scale. Collateral murder and direct. Pepe’s a bit over optimistic on occasion but I hope he has this one right “Now watch the collapse of global financial markets.”
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 13 2022 11:46 utc | 300