Putin's Counter Revolution

[Thomas Eckhardt]

> When Putin spoke of 'chaos' in Kiev and Ukraine as a whole, in his
> press conference a few days after the Crimean invasion, he must have
> realised that his foreign audience, as well as the citizens of Kiev
> and all the people of Ukraine who favoured the revolution, knew there
> was no chaos.

No chaos, perhaps, but an unelected government that has come to power 
through a coup d'etat pushed through by right wing extremists in 
violation of various agreements between the government and the 
protesters. Right wing extremists presumably represented only a very 
small part of the protesters against a corrupt but democratically 
elected government but now constitute twenty percent of the government 
and have been given/taken over responsibility for national security/the 
military.

It seems that this is what we wanted, supported and continue to support.

I am no fan of Putin or Yanukovich but every account of the events that 
is critical of Putin's actions needs to address these issues. Otherwise 
it is merely propaganda of the most dangerous sort.

And of course, there is also the expansion of NATO and the geopolitical 
chessboard, not to mention Chevron and Nuland/Kagan or the interests of 
the EU and Germany which led to the shameful display of our foreign 
minister making deals with a barely disguised Nazi like Oleh Tyahnybok 
(as for shameful displays, see also Tyahnybok/McCain).

And I will not even mention the decisive issue of who exactly deployed 
the snipers.

As far as I am concerned, the last time I have seen German and US 
politicians and pundits in such Orwellian harmony was when they decided 
to bomb the sh** out of Serbia. Didn't like it then, don't like it now. 
The stakes are much higher now, though...

Enter John Kerry for some comic relief:

"You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to 
assert your interests (...) This is an act of aggression that is 
completely trumped up in terms of its pretext. It's really 19th century 
behavior in the 21st century."

If political satire had not been dead since Henry Kissinger received the 
Nobel Peace Prize, it certainly would be now.

The Ides of March, eh?

Thomas
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l