The Freedom Snipers of Maidan, Part 2

It seems now that the turbulences in the Ukraine are not protests, riots, or a “color revolution”, but a longtime plotted and by Western agents supported fascist coup. What takes place at present is vandalism and looting, the disintegration of a dysfunctional political system, and the overthrow of a corrupt  and rightfully loathed political caste.

It is not clear yet if the fascist coup will succeed or if the remaining and still intact forces of the old political system can regain control. The Bercut riot police force is disbanded, some police departments have openly joined the fascist groups, and the army seems to be paralyzed. 

In the first part I concluded, that most of the Maidan crowd are unemployed men, but I have to amend the analysis by naming two other constituencies. The bigger one consists of the poor and less well educated farmers, who normally would work on the fields but in winter have enough time at hand, the smaller one are workers in seasonal jobs like construction and tourism.

The Ukraine used to be among the richest Soviet republics and the country is still one of the worlds leading exporters of wheat and coarse grains (barley, rye, oats, corn/maize), but its economy has been declining for years and currently is pretty much in ruins because after becoming independent most state owned businesses were quickly privatized and the profits disappeared in Swiss bank accounts. The country is essentially in the hands of various oligarchs, just like Russia in the 1990s, only worse. The oligarchs own the media, the courts, the police, the banks, and pretty everything else.

The political system is ripe with corruption, cronyism, and mismanagement. The majority of Ukrainian politicians are for sale to the highest bidder.

This is the outcome of a rushed conversion from a state economy to a Western style free market economy. 

The main players in this drama:

The Ukrainian people

Most Ukrainians are deeply unhappy and incensed by blatant corruption and social injustice. They all want prosperity, safety, and a stable and just society, yet they are divided about the way to achieve it. Some of them see an integration with Western Europe as the best hope of achieving this goal, others see a participation in an economic union with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan as a much better option.

Whatever their opinion may be, in the end it won’t matter at all in this conflict, because the ordinary Ukrainians are just pawns used by all sides.

Viktor Yanukovich

Ex-president Viktor Yanukovich has fled, his whereabouts are not known. The parliament voted to refer him to the ICC in Den Hague, which may seem harsh and unjustified considering that he did nothing else than all the other politicians. Yet the pictures of his 140-hectare estate with a garage full of classic sports cars, a hovercraft, a golf course, exotic gardens with a private zoo, and a restored sailing ship rule out any pity for him.

He was counting on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s help, but Putin profoundly dislikes him and never was pleased with his avarice and dishonesty. Yanukovich for sure acted incompetent and foolish, he is to a big part responsible that fascist parties today have a real chance to take over the country.

Yulia Timoshenko

Yulia Timoshenko (the “Gas Princess”) is one of the oligarchs, benefiting from the privatizations after independence. In the Western media she has been elevated to quasi sainthood but the Ukrainians themselves have some reservations.

In 2011 she was convicted for embezzlement and abuse of power, sentenced to seven years in prison, and ordered to pay 188 million US$. Her business partner, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, was convicted in the US for money laundering, corruption, and fraud, the magnitude of which was in the billions of dollars.

Tymoshenko has been hastily rehabilitated and is ready to be put on the ballot for elections in May. She is undoubtedly corrupt and very probably responsible for contract killings but she is the most clever of all players and some regard her as the only chance to avoid a civil war and keep the neo-Nazis at bay.

She suffers from crippling back pain and appears at the moment to be wheelchair bound, yet some commentators suspect that to be just another trick to arouse sympathy.

Vitali Klitschko

A former world heavyweight champion and now the leader of the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform. He is probably the most honest of all players but he lacks oratory skills and sometimes appears to be naive. The fact that he holds a PhD degree (in sports science) doesn’t help.

The US envois don’t take him serious and don’t support him. He is not involved in the present caretaker government but has announced his candidacy for the coming presidential elections.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk

A lawyer and career politician who until now has served as Minister of Economy, Foreign Minister, and chairman of the parliament. He has been repeatedly insulted by right wing politicians because of his alleged Jewish roots. He is perceived as uncharismatic and as a populist, who has changed his allegiances so often and switched sides so many times than nobody knows anymore what he really stands for.

Yatsenyuk is the preferred presidential candidate of the USA.

Oleg Tyagnybok

He is the leader of the far-right Svoboda (Freedom) party and commands a much more powerful force (both politically and in terms of violent street power) than his political rivals. The EU really doesn’t want him around, but he has a solid basis in the western Ukraine and backing in the USA, therefore he cannot be easily bypassed.

Tyagnybok is clearly an ultranationalist and fascist who considers Jews and Russians as the root of all evil, dislikes the EU as well as Russia, has “Ukraine for Ukrainians” on his banner, promises the “re-birth of the nation,” and has called for “the liberation of his country from the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia.”

After the 2010 conviction of Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk for his role in the death of nearly 30,000 people at the Sobibor camp, Tyahnybok rushed to Germany to declare Demjanjuk a hero who was “fighting for truth.”

In the Ukrainian parliament, where Svoboda holds 37 seats, Tyagnybok’s deputy Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn repeatedly quoted Goebbels (he has even founded a think tank called “the Joseph Goebbels Political Research Center”). Mykhalchyshyn is the main link between Svoboda and the Pravy Sektor.

The Pravy Sektor (Right Sector)

This is a shadowy syndicate of fascists and ultra-nationalists (they call themselves “autonomous nationalists”), distinguished by a skinhead style of dress and a fascination with street violence. They are promising to lead their army of aimless, disillusioned young men on “a great European Reconquest.” The group originated among football hooligans and has grown exponentially in the last years.

They promise to fight “against degeneration and totalitarian liberalism, for traditional national morality and family values.” Via Svoboda they are linked to an umbrella organization of international fascist parties called the “Alliance of European National Movements.”

In essence the Pravy Sektor is the military wing of Svoboda. 

Dmitro Yarosh, one leader of Pravy Sektor, revealed in an interview that the group has amassed a big arsenal of weapons and is prepared to “to defend all of Ukraine.” Andriy Tarasenko, another leader, said that the groups page on the social network Vkontakte has more than 50,000 members. On the barricades, “hundreds are quickly turning into thousands,” he claimed.

Most of the armed militias in Maidan are part of the Pravy Sektor. Armed with helmets, shields, and clubs, the group’s cadres have manned the front lines of Maidan and led the storming of government buildings, chanting: “Ukraine uber alles.”

Afiliated fascist groups involved in Maidan are Spilna Sprava (Common Cause), Afgantsy (a coalition of Afghanistan veterans), Trizub’, ‘Patriot of Ukraine’, and UNA-UNSO.‘

The Oligarchs

Most of them believe that as long as the Ukraine maintains an anti-Russian stance the European Union will let them do whatever they want to do inside the Ukraine, and they are correct. For them, signing an otherwise meaningless agreement with the EU is basically accepting the following deal: they become the faithful servants of their EU masters in exchange for that the EU masters will let them continue to pillage the Ukraine in pretty much any way they want.

There is a smaller group of oligarchs who still stand to lose more than win if the Russian-Ukrainian relations sour and Russia introduces trade barriers with the Ukraine (which Russia would have to do if the Ukraine signs an free trade agreement with the EU). These oligarchs believe that more money can be made from Russia than from the EU and they are the folks who convinced Viktor Yanukovich to make his switch from the EU towards Russia.

The European Union

For Western Europe the Ukraine is first and foremost a market to sells goods and services. The Ukraine could also provide cheap labor for the EU, but considering the already high EU unemployment, letting Ukrainians flood across the boarders into the West is not a viable political option. Average unemployment in the southern countries of the Eurozone is 17 percent, Greece and Spain have 27 percent unemployment.

The big companies would of course like to set up sweatshops, but Ukraine’s unemployment rate of 7.6 percent is comparatively low and the population is not yet ready to accept third world wages.

There is another economic dilemma: Ukraine’s main economy centers are tightly integrated with Russia, and they are located mainly in the Eastern part. Russia has made very clear that Euro-association would mean closed borders on the East and that means death of the whole manufacturing sector. A loss of the Russian market would be very hard to counteract, given that there’s zero demand for Ukrainian tractors and tanks in the EU.

The EU itself is in a deep economic, social, and political crisis and is absolutely desperate for new opportunities to rescue itself from the ongoing slow-motion collapse. The EU would like to exploit Ukrainian resources but it cannot pay the Ukraine’s deb’s, it can only arrange further IMF loans. All this becomes clear by studying carefully the 1500 pages of the proposed agreement with the EU.

Yet the situation is urgent, because the Ukraine is out of cash and there are a lot of people who depend of government payouts, like the civil servants and the pensioners for instance. Financial reserves are down to a few days, federal structures are being dismantled throughout the country, regional governors are fleeing or reseigning, and a default on some 60 billion Euros of Ukrainian bonds, many held by Russian banks, seems likely.

The financial reforms which the EU in the proposed agreement demands are alone for the above mentioned reasons unfeasible and would inevitably lead to further civil unrest.

Baroness Ashton, the first EU official to visit Kiev since the overthrow of the government, voiced strong support and urged to form an “inclusive” government, but she spelled out no details of any foreign financial assistance, saying that the EU would work with the IMF, which would make its own assessment of the situation.

The present situation is a nightmare for European politicians, but the Ukrainian nationalists and the armed heroes of Maidan are mainly bought and paid for by the USA. The EU bureaucrats can continue visiting the Ukraine and make loud statements, in the end they really don’t matter.

The USA

US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Jane Nuland is married to the prominent neocon ideologue Robert Kagan (foreign policy commentator at Brookings). Her brother-in-law Frederick W. Kagan is a leading military expert at the American Enterprise Institute, he has shaped decisively US policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

She was foreign policy adviser to Dick Cheney, US ambassador to NATO, and special envoy for Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.

An intercepted phone conversation proved her disregard for the European partners (“Fuck the EU”) as well as for most Ukrainian leaders. She also stated: “We have invested more than five billion dollars to help Ukraine to achieve these and other goals.”

She and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt are cold warriors, put in place by President Barack Obama, who with many key appointments has proven, that he, despite his rhetoric of change and apeasement, is basically a hardline neoconservative.

More than a hundred Western NGOs are operating in the Ukraine. CANVAS, USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, Open Society Institute, Freedom House, just to name a few. Together with CIA-operatives they have equipped the fascist storm troops in Maidan with helmets, shields, clubs, firearms, kevlar vests, tents, and communication equipment.

They helped with logistical support, provided food and organized transportation. The Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs for instance has paid a field hospital and medical equipment ordered by a Ukrainian NGO for the treatment of injured fighters. There were also reports that jobless men from Moldova get 30 Euros a day for participating in the riots and that busloads of them were transported to Kiev. 

As mentioned already in the first part of this text, during World War II, the Nazis supported a number of Ukrainian nationalist movements against the Soviet Union. After the war, these groups began receiving support from the CIA in their underground resistance fight against the Soviet Union, particularly in western Ukraine.

Among the Ukrainian groups supported by the Nazis and identified as potential allies of the CIA was the OUN-B (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists), led by Stepan Bandera.

Worshiped by Ukrainian nationalists as a legendary freedom fighter, Bandera’s real record is dishonorable and ignominious at best. After participating in a campaign to assassinate Ukrainians who supported accommodation with Poland, Bandera’s troops started to ethnically cleanse western Ukraine of Poles in 1943. They killed over 90,000 Poles and many Jews, whom Bandera’s top deputy Yaroslav Stetsko was determined to exterminate. After the war Bandera continued to organize and direct a fascist insurgency, advocating a totalitarian, ethnically pure Europe. His affiliated Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) carried out an armed struggle against the Soviet Union. The bloodbath he inspired ended only when KGB agents assassinated him in Munich in 1959.

When World War II ended, the surviving OUN-B members fled to Western Europe and the USA (often with CIA help) where they quietly forged political alliances with right-wing elements.

In Washington, the OUN-B reconstituted itself under the banner of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), and by the mid-1980’s, the Reagan administration was penetrated by UCCA members, with the group’s chairman Lev Dobriansky serving as ambassador to the Bahamas and his daughter Paula sitting on the National Security Council.

Reagan personally welcomed Yaroslav Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7000 Jews in Lviv, into the White House in 1983. “Your struggle is our struggle,” Reagan told the former Nazi criminal. “Your dream is our dream.”

The UCCA played a leading role in opposing investigations of suspected Nazi war criminals and when the US Justice Department in 1985 launched a program to capture and prosecute Nazi war criminals, the UCCA lobbied Congress to halt the initiative.

In the last weeks the UCCA has organized rallies in cities across the USA in support of the Maidan fighters. When several hundred demonstrators marched through downtown Chicago, some of them waved Ukrainian flags while others proudly flew the red and black banners of the UPA and OUN-B, chanting: “USA supports Ukraine.”

As mentioned before, the Svoboda’ (Freedom) party, which made international headlines after winning nearly 10 percent of the votes and 37 seats in the last parliamentary election, is the successor of Banderas OUN-B, and the Pravy Sektor is its military wing. 

The Maidan fighters will hardly lay down their weapons and go home peacefully. They were unexpectedly successful in resisting the police, injuring and killing scores of policemen and taking many of them as prisoners. They were building massive barricades which are rather earthworks and they were firebombing an armored personal carrier, they burned down big buildings and completely devastated many government offices. They smashed computers and destroyed crucial files about tax debts and criminal investigations. They have seized weapons and ammunition depots of police and army. According to the latest news 2,000 firearms and hundreds of thousands ammunition cartridges have been put away by the neo-Nazis.

They rejected the agreement for an orderly transition toward early elections, instead seizing additional key government buildings and installations. Fascist fighters have even taken control of the atomic power plant in Rovno by occupying administrative buildings and burning the files to the central computer. This nuclear plant is the main energy resource for a whole province.

Right now Kiew is in chaos. The Maidan troops have rejected a deadline to vacate occupied government buildings, countering with their own deadline to release jailed protesters. Most Regional State Administrations in Western Ukraine are occupied by right wing activists and the governors have resigned or fled. The new rulers have banned all activities and symbols of the Communist Party and the Party of Regions.

Chief Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman asked Kiev’s Jews to leave the city and, if possible, the country, due to fears that Jews might be targeted in the ongoing chaos. The Israel National News reported that Jewish shops have been vandalized and threats to the Jewish community have increasingly been uttered. 

All this doesn’t sound promising and it doesn’t bode well for a peaceful and prosperous future of the Ukraine, but all the USA needs is chaos, something easy to achieve and relatively cheap to finance. Chaos, mayhem, and even a full-scale civil war in the Ukraine will not negatively impact them but will mean trouble for Russia, which is good (for the US). It will also spell trouble for the European Union, but the Obama administration doesn’t care much about their European partners, who are just pawns like all other client regimes, and they care even less about the sufferings of the Ukrainian aborigines.

Of course a Western puppet regime would be the most preferred outcome and open the door to the eastward expansion of NATO, finally reaching Russia’s border. It is a long boarder, 1400 km long, and facing NATO along this line would be a major headache for Russia.

Russia

Regardless of the closeness between the languages and cultures, regardless of a long common history, regardless of the fact that Russians and Ukrainians jointly defeated Nazi Germany, regardless of the close economic ties, Russia does not need the Ukraine and it does not want to takeover its neighbor and incorporate it into Russia.

Why should they want this country? The Ukrainian economy is in ruins, the nation is plagued by immense social and political tensions, and there are no natural resources which Russia would need.

Yet Russia needs stability and prosperity in the Ukraine, because the collapse of such a big neighbor is bound to affect the Russian economy. Most Russian families have ties with the Ukraine and millions of Russians live there (also millions of Ukrainians live in Russia). If a civil war breaks out Russia would almost inevitably be drawn in.

There is also the risk of five nuclear power plants falling in the hands of neo-Nazi stormtroopers and there are the pipelines which transport Russian gas through Ukraine on its way west. 

Russia needs stability and prosperity in the Ukraine and that was the main reason, that President Putin offered 15 billion US$ plus discounted gas to provide a cardiac resuscitation to the ruined Ukrainian economy and start some kind of reforms.

The governors of Kharkov and Crimea have called back their local Berkut forces and are openly talking about secession, but even in Crimea all Russia really needs is a status quo: Peace, prosperity, a good tourism infrastructure to host Russian tourists, and stable basing right for the Black Sea Fleet. For that Russia does not need to occupy or annex the Crimea.

However, should the Crimean Peninsula be attacked by the neo-Nazis, there is no doubt that the Black Sea Fleet will intervene to protect the local population with which it has many family ties.The Black Sea Fleet is infinitely better trained and equipped that the Ukrainian police or military and it includes a very powerful Naval Infantry force (one Brigade and one Battalion, the latter specialized in counter-terrorism operations).

It is one thing to beat up and subdue riot cops and quite another to deal with battle hardened (Chechnya, Georgia) and highly trained elite forces armed to the teeth with the latest and best military equipment.

For now Russia has just enacted emergency plans to seal the border to Ukraine.

The Sniper Killings

There were reports of snipers on rooftops using automatic weapons, but the identity of the snipers remains unknown. The Western media anonymously would refer, without evidence, to government snipers. RT News, however, reported the presence of both police and Pravy Sektor gunmen in possession of automatic weapons.

On February 20, just as then still President Viktor Yanukovych met with a high level EU delegation, 21 protesters were killed by professional snipers. It was not a spontaneous event resulting from clashes between protesters and riot police, nor was it the result of gunfire between the police and the Neo-Nazi storm-troopers. The victims were shot in the head, the neck or the heart. None were shot anywhere else like in the legs.

These killings had the hallmarks of a carefully planned operation and they happened in a short period. These targeted killings were subsequently used to topple the government and President Yanukovych.

 

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The Freedom Snipers of Maidan

There are people who prefer to think by themselves and come to their own conclusions. These people are called skeptics.

The skeptics for instance wondered, why at the start of the Syrian uprising the death toll among police officers was so much higher than that of the peaceful demonstrators. Were the dead officers really all victims of “friendly fire,” mistakenly shot by colleagues? Were they maybe all plainclothes officers, mingled among the demonstrators?

None of these explanations seem plausible.

The skeptics are also still wondering, why the Occupy Wall Street protesters didn’t use shields, helmets. clubs, petrol bombs (Molotov Cocktails), and snipers posted on the buildings surrounding Zuccotti Park, to give their demands more weight. The protesters in Thailand, in Venezuela, and in the Ukraine use all of this and they are praised as heroes by Western media, while the Occupy Wall Street protests never were taken seriously, were ignored or belittled by the press, and didn’t achieve anything.

Protests in Western countries though will be met with a very different response than what the protesters in Kiev, Caracas, or Bangkok are facing. For example:

In August 2011 protests in Britain against the slaying of Mark Duggan, a 29 year old black man, turned violent when officers detained a young girl, leading to severe clashes, rioting, arson, and looting in several cities. Riot police turned out in force and 3,100 people were arrested.

Nobody called for restraint of the police then, but these were riots of course and not peaceful protests like in Kiev.

The protesters in Kiev’s Maidan square have the full and undivided sympathy of the Western media because they try to topple a government which has been proven to be an impediment to the integration of the Ukraine into the family of democratic European states, called the European Union. This integration would bring prosperity (for the corporations), security (for the investors), and freedom (to make extraordinary profits and exploit all available resources).

Like in Latvia, Greece, Spain, and Portugal, businesses would greatly benefit from a harmonious integration into Western Europe and the economic integration would also improve the chances to become a member of NATO, the worldwide bulwark against the dark and evil forces of terrorism and socialism.

While the European Union’s bid to help with annually 160 million US$ for the next five years seems minuscule compared to Russia’s 15 billion US$ offer (3 billion of which are already paid), the Ukraine under a Western-leaning government would sell vital public services to international investors, thereby collecting the necessary cash to repay IMF bonds and other debt obligations.

Though the European Union’s conditions seem spiteful at first glance, they are not worse than the prerequisites for IMF loans. It is the usual mix of austerity (gutting social welfare, cutting wages and pensions), tax cuts and deregulation for private companies, selling off public assets, and opening the economy for predatory Western enterprises. 

Like in Syria the Ukrainian police was at first remarkably restrained in the face of protest violence, but it didn’t help, the restraint was perceived as weakness and only emboldened the protesters who humiliated the police officers, snatched their shields and gear, ripped off their uniforms, and took many of them hostage (it will be interesting to find out, what is happening with these prisoners.)

The Ukrainian Interior Ministry stated on its website, that the number of police officers killed in Kyiv has risen to 16. A further 130 policemen have been hospitalized with gunshot wounds. The freedom snipers of Maidan seem to be very successful.

The skeptics at this point will wonder, why peaceful protesters suddenly were equipped with helmets, clubs, and shields, the skeptic will wonder how they suddenly had petrol bombs, pistols, and rifles at hand. A skeptic will also ask, in what way thousands of protesters were able to camp on Maidan square for several days. Who organized the food, who setup the tents, what about the sanitation?

Don’t the protester not have to work in their day job?

The obvious and self-evident answer: No, most of them have no job. Most participants of the various color revolutions, Arab Spring uprisings, and other CIA- and NGO-organized movements are unemployed young men. Uneducated, testosterone driven, aggressive young men, who feel disenfranchised, sidelined, unwanted, and unneeded.

Until their participation in the protests they had to channel their aggression, their destructive energy into acts of vandalism, sexual harassment, and petty crime. They were disliked, despised, execrated by the community, and every now and then they were caught, sentenced and jailed for their aggressive acts.

The protest movements (or the jihad in Arab countries) gives them a purpose, makes them feel accepted and wanted. Here they can act out, riot and loot, smash and burn public property, lash out at the hated police, fulfill their wildest dreams of mayhem and destruction.

And they can do all this with impunity.

Suddenly they are not anymore the troublemakers, the hoodlums, the scum, on the contrary they are the heroes, the trailblazers, the harbingers of change, the vanguards of a new order, of a new regime which will solve all existing problems and bring prosperity and happiness to everybody.

All the smashing, looting, and burning is done now for a good cause.

But who is organizing this people and providing logistical support? Are there local parties and organizations which Western NGOs and spy agencies can use for the purpose of regime change?

Of course there are, and they are all well connected with the Western agents of change.

The jobless, the uneducated, the grudging and embittered in all places heed the siren calls of malevolent populists and follow the pied pipers wether they play their tunes in churches, mosques, on talk radio, on TV, on social media, political websites, or party gatherings.

The jobless and uneducated are the natural constituency of reactionary right-wing demagogues and fanatical religious preachers. 

While in the Greater Middle East Western spy agencies have been for many decades supporting and coordinating radical Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda plus various affiliates, the Gulen Movement, and other smaller factions, gangs, parties, to remove undesirable governments, in Eastern Europe they used fascist and neo-Nazi groups for this purpose.

During World War II, the Nazis supported a number of Ukrainian nationalist movements against the Soviet Union. After the war, these groups began receiving support from the CIA in their underground resistance fight against the Soviet Union, particularly in western Ukraine.

Among the Ukrainian groups marked by the Nazis and identified as potential allies of the CIA was the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). The inheritor of OUN’s political dogma is the neo-Nazi Svoboda movement led by Oleh Tyahnybok.

Other Ukrainian groups coddled by the Nazis and subsequently embraced by the CIA include the Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (the Security Service of the OUN), the Bandera Group (Bandera is the backbone of the Pravy Sector — Maidan’s assault unit), the Mel’nik Group, the Taras Bulba Partisan Unit in Galicia, and the Ukrainian Revolutionary Army of Western Ukraine and Galicia (the Red and Black flag of which has been reintroduced by the Maidan protesters). 

One has to admit, that the geopolitical planners of the US-Imperium have their prey on the run. They successfully undermine and replace governments all around the world, they turn countries into failed states with comparatively little effort, and bolster the already installed client regimes to prevent any escape from the neoliberal world order.

Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya are failed states, Syria is devastated, Thailand, Venezuela, and the Ukraine are under attack right now.

The CIA together with US based NGOs is busy to organize coups (Honduras) and protests (Egypt, the 2009 elections in Iran, right now Thailand, Venezuela, Ukraine), working hand in hand with financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, etc.), currency speculators (George Soros), corporations, and the UN (via imposed sanctions) to weaken resisting governments with economic sabotage.

If a country resists it is relentlessly attacked again and again (Syria). The US-imperial mindset is not prepared to concede, retreat is not an option, if things don’t work out, the agitators will pause, regroup, replenish their arsenals, and prepare for the next attack. This will go on until either the last independent nation is conquered, the Imperium has imploded, or World War III has wiped out humanity.

One final point:

Regime change is decisively promoted by the dominance of the global popular culture which is basically an Anglo-American culture. All expressions, articulations, manifestations of this culture paint life in Western countries in the brightest colors, create the illusion of easy success, affluence, abundance, luxury, and promise a limitless orgy of consumerism in a paradise of supermarkets and shopping malls.

This is the equivalent of the glass pearls, which the conquistadores handed out to the native population of the newly discovered American continent. Glass pearls will not do it anymore, so todays conquistadores have to promise a shopping heaven where the shelves and display areas are always packed to the brim with useful, rock solid, and nevertheless cheap consumer goods.

This is the soft power of the US-imperium. The soft power constituted by Hollywoods dream machine, by worldwide disseminated US TV-series, by YouTube, by social media portals (Facebook, Twitter), by slick and glossy advertising, by omnipresent Anglo-American popular music (Hard Rock, Hip Hop, Soul), by blockbuster novels, and contemporary graphic design.

Nobody is left unaffected by these cultural expressions of US-society and it is hard not to use the euphemism which conceal the brutality of the system. It is hard to escape the stereotypes, the conventions, the underlying ideology, it is hard to think outside the box, which Western global culture has created for confining our thoughts and restraining our imagination.

It is hard not to get brainwashed.

Many people in the for regime change targeted countries idealize life in the West and for that reason don’t stand up against the violent uprisings or even support them. Many people in the Western Ukraine will be eager to join the supposedly democratic, prosperous, well organized, and corruption free European Union.

They will find out soon that all these attributes are a myth, are pure fantasy — but then it will be too late and nobody will care about their plight or even report about them because the journalists will be busy and completely occupied with covering the next imperial conquest.

Update from RT News:

A day after Yanukovich agreed to opposition demands and signed an EU brokered deal, his residence in Kiev was abandoned and left virtually unguarded. Some media reports speculate that the president has left for Kharkov in the east of the country.

In Kharkov a public conference of 3,477 deputies from local councils of southeastern Ukraine has declared that they are taking responsibility for the constitutional order in the country. “We have gathered here not to separate the country, but to save it,” the regional governor, Mikhail Dobkin, told the crowd.

Over 10, 000 people had come to the city’s Sport Palace, where the deputies were holding the meeting. The situation remained generally quiet with the crowd being partly in good spirits and partly subdued and concerned.

The Kharkov public gathering announced a number of measures local authorities should take in response to the developments in Kiev. They should take full responsibility for all decision in respective regions with no regard to authorities in Kiev until the constitutional order in the Ukraine is restored, a resolution of the meeting says.

“We, the local authorities of all levels, the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Sevastopol region decided to take responsibility for ensuring the constitutional order and the rights of citizens on their territory,” a resolution of the deputies stated.

They authorities will take measures to protect arms depots and prevent their take-over and looting by radical opposition activists. Citizens are encouraged to form local militias to protect public order. Local authorities are to fund and support those militias.

The deputies have criticized the decision adopted by the Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) in the last few days, saying they are raising doubts about its legitimacy. The legislative acts may have been passed involuntary and are neither legitimate nor lawful. The resent decisions of the national parliament were taken in conditions “of terror, threats of violence and death,” the resolution says.

The head of the Kharkov administration, Gennady Kernes, has called the public meeting “an attempt by qualified deputies from the east of the country to stabilize the situation.”

“My colleagues and I have been personally threatened. But today we have gathered to change the situation,” he said. “We will not give in; we will fight till the end.”

The statement has been echoed by Rada’s Party of Regions deputy, Vadim Kolesnichenko, who also said that politicians are being threatened and “their families are basically hostages .”

Russia sent several officials in the capacity of observers to the gathering, including Aleksey Pushkov, the head of the Russian parliamentary commission on foreign affairs, Mikhail Markelov, Pushkov’s counterpart in the Council of Federation, the upper chamber of the parliament, and several governors from regions in eastern Russia.

“The decisions taken here are positive and concrete. What is important is that everything voiced here was implemented in the interests of the Ukrainian people and the entire Ukraine. What Ukraine needs now is common sense and a survival instinct,” said Evgeny Savchenko, Governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, commenting on the Kharkov gathering.

Meanwhile, the parliament (Verkhovna Rada) is holding a new emergency session. While the whereabouts of Ukrainian President Yanukovich remain uncertain, opposition leaders passed the law on the return to the 2004 Constitution without the president’s signature.

They have also elected Aleksandr Turchinov the new head speaker of the Supreme Rada. He will be taking over the cabinet’s work until the formation of a coalition government. Another new appointee is Arsen Avakov, who was named the acting head of the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine.

With 233 voting in favor, the Ukrainian Rada has ruled to free the former PM Yulia Timoshenko from prison.

The Creative Destruction Of Syria

Finian Cunningham  Strategic Culture Foundation

US-led Western regime change in Syria might be described as a process of creative destruction. Like Schumpeter’s economic concept of cyclical creative destruction, so too Washington’s political machinations in Syria seem to be playing out likewise.

We begin with the premise that the humanitarian crisis in Syria over the past nearly three years is largely as a result of a Western covert proxy war inflicted on that country. The objective is to destabilize, terrorize, and eventuate regime change in the Arab country.

The crisis afflicting Syria with over 130,000 dead and nearly nine million people displaced from their homes — nearly 40 per cent of the total population — would not be occurring if it were not for the infiltration of that country with massive flows of weapons, fighting funds and foreign mercenary brigades. US and NATO Special Forces, along with Western military intelligence, have worked with Saudi, Qatari, Jordanian, Israeli, and Turk allies to foment this externally driven insurgency. All under the cover of an Arab Spring revolt.

The highly criminal process has attempted to destroy a sovereign country in order to create a new political order, one that is bereft of the existing political establishment under President Bashar Al Assad. This new order brought about by regime change would be amenable to Western interests in terms of Middle East politics and oil economics. In particular, the desired pro-Western regime would deprive Russia, China, and Iran of an important ally in the Mediterranean.

Western desire for regime change in Syria is well documented, according to American journalist Seymour Hersh, going back to at least 2007 when the George W. Bush Presidency conceived of a plan to undermine the Syrian-Iranian resistance against Washington’s regional hegemony. Other historical studies argue that Western plans for regime change in Syria hark even further back to the 1950s when Dwight Eisenhower was US president.

Last year, former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas revealed that he was approached two years before the outbreak of latest conflict in Syria in March 2011 by British political figures, who told him of a plot to unseat the Syrian government.

So, the premise of Western regime change being the driver of conflict and humanitarian crisis in Syria is on solid ground.

By contrast, the alternative premise of the events in Syria being the result of a “popular pro-democracy uprising against Assad” is a nebulous narrative emanating from Western governments and the Western mainstream media. That narrative does not stand up to scrutiny. A modified version to accommodate the contradiction that the “uprising” has become driven largely by Al Qaeda-linked brigades goes along the lines that the initial pro-democracy movement has somehow been “hijacked by extremists”. But an objective study of the conflict shows that the extremists were always dominant, and that these extremists have been bankrolled, directed and armed by the US-led axis of NATO and regional allies from the outset.

The divergence of these narratives — one based on reality, the other based on propaganda to serve political interests — is reaching a watershed over the humanitarian issue of besieged Syrian cities. The main location currently in focus is the city of Homs, Syria’s third urban centre after the capital Damascus, and the second city of Aleppo.

In total across Syria, there is reckoned to be some 250,000 civilians trapped in siege situations, according to the United Nations. The conditions for these civilians have deteriorated alarmingly with reports of starvation and privation from lack of basic utilities and medicines.

But which party is responsible for the sieges and the humanitarian suffering? Typically, the Western governments and the Western news media are blaming the Syrian authorities and army for imposing blockades. As with much of their narrative, there is scant factual evidence to support and it seems to rely on assertion and innuendo.

“Syria evacuated 83 civilians on Friday who had lived under government siege in the devastated city of Homs for a year and a half”, read a report in the New York Times on February 8.

The general inference in the Western media is that the Assad government is guilty of a crime against humanity by using starvation as a weapon.

A draft resolution tabled this week at the UN Security Council by Western and Arab states also heavily attributed responsibility for the siege in Homs and other cities to the Syrian government.

Russia and China rejected the draft resolution as one-sided and “divorced from reality” — as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put it.

As it turns out in fact, Russia and China are correct in their assessment of the civilian sieges in Syria. Both tend to substantially agree with the Syrian government’s account that the humanitarian suffering of civilians trapped within Homs Old City, as well as in parts of Damascus and Aleppo, are the result of the Western-backed mercenaries. These groups are in effect holding on to urban territory by holding civilians hostage and using them as human shields.

This was obliquely admitted in the New York Times report cited above. Near the end of that article, the paper noted that why the siege in Homs has endured for nearly 18 months until this week’s arrival of aid convoys and partial evacuation of citizens was because the anti-government militants have previously prevented any deal being done.

“Rebels have rejected similar offers to evacuate women and children in the past because of concerns about what might happen to any men, including fighters, who are left behind”, reported the New York Times. Or in other words, the so-called rebels were using women and children as human shields.

In another tacit admission of the real situation, as opposed to the propagandized version which blames the Syrian government for the siege, the British Guardian reported that most of the civilians evacuated from Homs this week were being accommodated in other parts of the city, that is, in those parts controlled by government forces. 

The Guardian reports on February 12: “The vast majority of those leaving the Old City were heading for the homes of relatives in other parts of Homs, according to the UN.”

Now think about that. If the Syrian government forces were really imposing a barbaric siege on citizens in the Old City district, as the Western media maintain, would those emerging starving citizens then voluntarily go to government-held areas for refuge and respite?

Testimony from some of the Homs’ evacuees bears that view out too. One mother told how life within the trapped city was like “living in a jungle of monsters”. She added that the militants would habitually steal whatever meager food rations the civilians had in their possession.

Several other sources, such as the Governor of Homs, Talal al-Bazzari, confirm that the Syrian government has worked along with the UN and Syrian Arab Red Crescent to break the siege. Aid convoys and evacuation vehicles have been fired on with gunfire and mortars. Reliable sources indicate that it was the militants within the Old City district who opened fire. This is consistent with previous warnings from these same groups that they would attack any UN aid convoys trying to enter the area.

The same hostage-taking, human-shield scenario prevails in the militant-held Yarmouk district of Damascus and in Aleppo. It is clear from all the mentioned examples that the humanitarian crisis within besieged Syrian cities is the pernicious creation of Western-backed mercenaries — the same mercenaries who have been infiltrated into Syria to destroy that country in order to bring about Western regime change.

The humanitarian plight within the besieged city of Homs and other urban areas could serve as a microcosm of the entire conflict that Syria has been subjected to for the past three years. An entire nation has been held to ransom by external forces, comprising Al Qaeda foreign jihadists on the ground, all the way up to Western politicians sitting in high office.

What is disturbing about this criminal process of Western creative destruction is that the cycle does not stop once unleashed. The Western-backed mercenaries create the appalling humanitarian suffering within besieged cities, but instead of that narrative and its authors being rigorously held to account, as it should owing to the emerging facts and testimonies, the Western propagandists move on to another creative-destructive cycle.

Both the Financial Times and the New York Times have this week carried op-ed pieces, which stridently argue that the humanitarian crisis in Syria’s cities now merits a full-on Western military intervention.

Max Boot, a senior fellow at the US-based Council on Foreign Relations, writes in the Financial Times comparing Syria with Rwanda and Srebrenica, and he blames all the horror on the “Assad regime” with a litany of outright falsehoods.

Boot says: “No one is suggesting sending ground troops. But options range from doing more to arm the moderate opposition [sic], to declaring a no-fly zone. Drones could strike al-Qaeda operatives in Syria; air power could create humanitarian zones near the Turkish and Jordanian borders. The US could also take the lead in referring Mr Assad and his aides for war crimes prosecution.”

He adds: “The UN Security Council is unlikely to support such steps, but the US would not have to act alone. Allies from France to Saudi Arabia have been urging action and would be eager to co-operate. But they will do little as long as Mr Obama refuses to act.”

This hoary “Responsibility to Protect” appeal, which the US and its allies played as a pretext for imperialist regime change in Libya in 2011, is also reiterated by Danny Postel and Nader Hashemi in the New York Times, referring to the sieges in Syria as “moral obscenities” and blaming Russia as “a major obstacle” for its support of the Syrian government.

Postel and Hashemi contend: “We should invoke the Responsibility to Protect, the principle that if a state fails to protect its populations from mass atrocities — or is in fact the perpetrator of such crimes — the international community must step in to protect the victims… And if a multinational force cannot be assembled, then at least some countries should step up… to provide the necessary force on the ground, with air cover from participating nations.”

In case this hackneyed R2P appeal does not work, Western opinion formers are also lately lining up other justifications for military intervention in Syria, including the threat from Al Qaeda to Western countries and the destabilization of the region’s security from refugees fleeing the violence in Syria. All problems, it should be noted, which are created by previous cycles of destructive Western covert intervention in Syria.

How depraved can such thinking get? Creative solutions for Western imperialism flow from its very own destructive predations. Lost in the destruction, it seems, is any ability for intelligent reasoning and cognition among Western thinkers and planners to face up to the real nature of the problem in Syria:

Western imperialism.