"In relation to the escalatory potentials of this situation, the passions liable to be aroused by the readiness of the U.S. and E.U. to identify themselves with West Ukrainian nationalists should not be underestimated. An article by Patrick Cockburn which has just appeared in the ‘Independent’ deals with the Lviv pogrom of July 1941, to which ‘harry’ referred in a previous thread, recalling the murder of his uncle’s family. An excerpt: ‘I thought about Lviv again last week when I saw a sentence in a newspaper referring to it as “a bastion of Ukrainian nationalism”. ‘I wondered just how much the writer knew about Ukrainian nationalists in Lviv and the strong evidence that, in 1941, they had played a leading role in one of the horror stories of the Second World War. ‘This was the Lviv pogrom of 1 July 1941, when thousands of Jews were dragged from their homes, beaten and executed by either German troops or their Ukrainian helpers. Ukrainian politicians and historians have denied complicity, but surviving Jewish victims, other witnesses and contemporary photographs prove that Ukrainian militiamen and mobs of supporters carried out the pogrom, though the Germans oversaw it and committed many of the murders.’ Drawing on a study by the Canadian-Ukrainian historian Professor John-Paul Himka, Cockburn notes that the pogrom: ‘was primarily carried out by the militia of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) acting under German auspices. It happened quickly after the German occupation because the OUN wanted to show “the Germans that it shared their anti-Jewish perspectives and that it was worthy to be entrusted with the formation of a Ukrainian state.”
(See http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/to-see-what-ukraines-future-may-be-just-look-at-lvivs-shameful-past-9178968.html )
Actually it was not simply Jews who were murdered. The purge of the Polish ruling elite in the area initiated by Stalin was carried on by the Germans and their Ukrainian allies. Among the transcripts of the bugged conversations among captured German generals recorded at Trent Park, one finds the following explanation by General Rothkirch to General von Choltitz: ‘Of course masses of people were shot at Lvov. Thousands of them! First the Jews, then Poles who were also shot in thousands, non-Jews, the whole aristocracy and great landed proprietors and masses of students.’ As Cockburn notes, one cannot simply assume that the present generation of Ukrainian nationalists are ideological descendants of pro-Nazi Ukrainians. The truth actually appears to be that many aren’t, but some, and in particular some of the most active and influential, may well be. In any case, it might perhaps be advisable if people like Victorian Nudelman/Nuland, and Mr and Mrs Sikorski looked a little more closely at who some of their little friends are. Similarly, before Hilary Clinton compared Putin to Hitler she might perhaps have reflected on the fact that he was born in what was then Leningrad eight years after the end of the siege, and that his older brother died as a child of diptheria in the siege." Habakkuk
I doubt that it is lack of knowledge that Nuland et al support the Parvyi Sektor and Svoboda.
One can find a whole chapter of the relations between the Badera (Ukrainian Nazi) movement and “western” intelligence (Gehlen, BND, CIA etc) services in this book from the national archive.
HITLER’S SHADOW
Nazi War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence, and the Cold War
http://www.archives.gov/iwg/reports/hitlers-shadow.pdf
The latest item involving the Ukrainian Nazis and the CIA mentioned in the book plays in 1991 when the CIA tried to cover up the relation. But was it the last one? Or are their old contacts that were reactivated when Nuland and co needed “muscle” for their color revolution vs. 2.0?
During the Maidan “protests” Badera’s portrait was hung up prominently in the Kiev city hall after the Svoboda movement sized it.
From the book, Chapter 5
/quote/
Maltz recorded that “Bandera men … are not discriminating about who they kill; they are gunning down the populations of entire villages…. Since there are hardly any Jews left to kill, the Bandera gangs have turned on the Poles. They are iterally hacking Poles to pieces. Every day … you can see the bodies of Poles,
with wires around their necks, floating down the river Bug.” On a single day,July 11, 1943, the UPA attacked some 80 localities killing perhaps 10,000 Poles.
/endquote/
And:
/quote/
CIA operations with these Ukrainians began in 1948 under the cryptonym CARTEL, soon changed to AERODYNAMIC. Hrinioch stayed in Munich, but Lebed relocated to New York and acquired permanent resident status, then U.S. citizenship. It kept him safe from assassination, allowed him to speak to Ukrainian émigré groups, and permitted him to return to the United States after
operational trips to Europe. His identification in New York by other Ukrainians as a leader responsible for “wholesale murders of Ukrainians, Poles and Jewish
(sic),” has been discussed elsewhere.
…
[The CIA] thus shielded Lebed by denying any connection between Lebed and the Nazis and by arguing that he was a Ukrainian freedom fighter. The truth, of course, was more
complicated. As late as 1991 the CIA tried to dissuade OSI from approaching the German, Polish, and Soviet governments for war-related records related to the
OUN. OSI eventually gave up the case, unable to procure definitive documents on Lebed. Mykola Lebed, Bandera’s wartime chief in Ukraine, died in 1998. He is buried in New Jersey, …
/endquote/
One wonders what WaPo’s Anne Applebaum and her also neoconned husband, the Polish foreign minister, think about these people they today promote.
Our NeoConservative/NeoLiberal elites are ahistorical; partly as a matter of ideology, partly as a reflection of their arrogance, but largely as a matter of convenience. Actually, on a limited basis, they are capable of recollection of history, but only of those events the remembrance of which comport with their ideology, and which advance their agenda.
The truth is not in them.
This was precisely what my uncle told me before he died.
He was 14 when the Russians first came. They killed all the Communists, and the local community leaders. No one knew about it. They just disappeared. You already know when the Germans came. One day my uncle was standing in a bread line because he was blond and could pose as Polish (not Jewish). But one of his schoolmates saw him and informed the Ukrainian police. They arrested him for breaking the Jewish curfew and took him to the Town Hall. He was pressed into helping remove the bodies from the basement – the people the russians had killed. The Germans had the news services with them and were making a news reel of the scene. It stank so bad he couldn’t bear it for long and eventually begged the German officer who supervised him to let him go.
The officer said “then fly away”, which my uncle didn’t understand cos his German was rudimentary. “But I have no wings”. At which point the German officer picked him up and threw him out of the basement.
He tried to make his way back to his family but was arrested by another detachment of Ukrainian police who were looking for Jews breaking curfew. However he smelt so bad they released him rather than take him to custody. Very few people ever came back from their “custody”.
The rest of the history of the City you can look up. My uncle was warned about the coming pogrom by his brother who shaved German officers. His family gave him leather to trade (they used to own a leather factory) and sent him on his way to just get out.
None of the rest of his family survived. It was a large orthodox family.
Its worth noting, once when I expressed anti-Russian sentiment to him he chided me very sternly and said he knew of no people he liked better. Whatever you have heard of Russian anti-semitism, he considered it nothing. I have found the same. Russians are “racist” and “anti-semitic”. But it would never stop them from doing business with you, eating with you, or sleeping with you.
He died a very rich man and both Israeli and Belgian. I knew of no better man and no better speculator.
I know what the Lviv neo-Nazi grandfathers did during the war. I know how it sounds to the Russians when the Poles and Germans lecture them about Ukraine.
David Habakkuk
And Ha’aretz carried news about a certain Mr. Delta – un nome de guerre – and other armed Israelis giving a hand in Maidan.
Politics creates strange bedfellow – usually with a lasting disastrous impact.
All:
Preparing for war:
http://news.yahoo.com/brzezinski-formally-recognize-ukraine-prepare-nato-troops-193009083–politics.html
ZBig spoke with some clarity about Syria and Iran. It appears his defense of Iran was probably more about his respect for Iranians historic distrust of the Russians than it was about his concern for Iran.
It also appears that his deep rooted resentment against the Russians will not abate, and he is willing to go all in this time. He was probably overjoyed by the Russians going into Crimea as to him it was likely the opportunity he had been waiting for, to see the western media jump all over Putin in earnest, and with cause.
I think the success he feels from drawing the Russians into the Afghanistan “trap” has blinded him this time.
Zbig:
“Since Germany is the most prosperous and strongest economy in the EU, it should take the lead [in economically stabilizing Ukraine].”
I saw a documentary on PBS last year recreating some of those conversations, quite an eye-opener. As was the fact they only came to light by accident during a civilian researcher’s archive work on a different mundane bit of war history.
What our leaders knew then and what we don’t now come back to haunt us. Or haunt somebody, I’ll be gardening soon.
Sometimes if you live in a tough neighborhood you have to make friends with rough characters. I think that’s something most of America tends to forget.
b,
‘I doubt that it is lack of knowledge that Nuland et al support the Parvyi Sektor and Svoboda.’
This seems to me difficult to work out. You probably saw the report on RT last Wednesday headlined ‘Russia slams Ukraine’s UN envoy for publicly justifying Nazi collaborators’. An extract:
‘Russia has slammed Ukraine’s UN envoy for justifying Ukrainian Nazi collaborators on the sidelines of the Security Council session. The diplomat said the USSR fabricated accusations against Ukrainian nationalists during the Nuremberg Trials in the 1940s.
‘“With these words, [the] Ukrainian representative at the UN offended the memory of killed Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Poles, and citizens of other nationalities who fell victims to the atrocities committed by Ukrainian Nazi supporters,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement responding to Ukrainian diplomat Yuriy Sergeyev.
‘“There is a lot of proof of their violent crimes. We are ready to acquaint Sergeyev with them.”
‘Speaking after the UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday, the Ukrainian envoy accused “the Russian-Soviet side at the time” of attempts to press on “the Western allies to declare [the] Bandera movement members and others murderers.”
‘“The Nuremberg Trials (a series of 13 trials carried out in Nuremberg, Germany between 1945 and 1949) did not declare it. Why? Because the facts were falsified and the Soviet Union’s position at the time was unjust,” the diplomat told reporters.’
(See http://rt.com/news/russia-ukraine-justifying-nazi-840/ )
Leaving aside the fact that Nudelman/Nuland is herself Jewish, if she and her like – and also the Sikorskis, a Pole married to a Jew – had had any serious grasp of the history, one would have expected that they could have understood that such exchanges were likely.
One would also have thought they would have realised that passions might be aroused which may materially increase the chances of events spirally out of control.
And – as a result – one might have expected that they would have attempted to make their little friends make at least some kind of attempt to accomodate the sensitivities of those in the Ukraine who do not regard Bandera as a national hero.
It may be the key to the puzzle lies in the suggestion by ‘JerseyJeffersonian’ that our elites are ‘capable of recollection of history, but only of those events the remembrance of which comport with their ideology, and which advance their agenda.’
JerseyJeffersonian,
As I wrote in my response to ‘b’, your explanation may provide a key to making sense of what an insouciance which I have found very hard to comprehend.
A problem, however, is that people whose understanding of history is so selective that, in effect, they are acutely aware of their own grievances, but have minimal grasp of the sensitivities and neuralgic points of others, are unlikely in the long term even to ‘advance their [own] agenda.’ Such selective memory is a recipe for catastrophic miscalculation.
Harry,
A fascinating glimpse into the past. One small point. You write about your uncle:
‘He was 14 when the Russians first came. They killed all the Communists, and the local community leaders. No one knew about it. They just disappeared.’
Am I right in thinking that ‘communists’ was a slip?
Certainly the Soviets massacred their political prisoners before they pulled out of Lvov/Lviv – probably including a lot of Ukrainian nationalists. As to the Polish elite, the Soviets had liquidated their Polish officer prisoners ‘en masse’. But many of those in who ‘just disappeared’ would have been deported.
Recently I came across on the Imperial War Museum site a long interview they did with an old family friend of ours, who was deported to Kazakhstan, and got out with General Anders’ army, with whom he fought from Normandy to Berlin.
(See http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80023974 )
A few weeks ago I had a letter from him in response to some remarks I had made about Ukraine when writing to him at Christmas. He was hoping that the E.U. and the Russians would find a compromise. And while he is most certainly a Polish patriot, I have never heard him talk with personal bitterness about Russians.
Tyler
To paraphrase FDR
“Somoza is a SOB – but he is our SOB ” …
I believe that the neocons know that they work with the devil and don’t mind to do so. They are doing it in Syria by feeding weapons to the Jihadis. Why then not feed nazis in the Ukraine?
The neocons simply don’t care. There aim is destruction in the fervent believe that after destruction comes inevitably the paradise they envision. Crazies.
The people of the Right Sektor in Ukraine have had military training. Who trained them?
How were the long standing ties between the CIA and the Bandera fans used in preparation of the current conflict?
NATO is a paper tiger, hell they had to go to the USAF to get the munitions and assets to take out Libya (not exactly mother Russia).
The draw down now underway on US military forces will be draconian. We have a expeditionary field army that could easily be stranded in Afghanistan. Our economy is in the middle of the weakest economic recovery of modern times. In approximately 30 months we will probably be entering the next recession.
European homes and industry depend on Russian natural gas. The Ukrainian region has always been a doormat for the local great powers. It always will be, and there will always be periodic tribal massacres of one sort or the other. We have no key interests in this unfortunate land.
As for the spooks dancing with the descendants of the Nazis, so what? That is what spooks do. They deal with all the bad guys and good guys, and play them all against each other. Yea it is a messy business, but somebody has to do it. Do you want to?
Even the incompetents who constitute our national leadership understand these facts, there will be no war for the Ukraine.
All,
Tyler is absolutely correct. “Sometimes if you live in a tough neighborhood you have to make friends with rough characters.” In order for the Nuland gang to meet their ends of putting Ukraine firmly out of the Russian camp and firmly into the Western camp, they had to work with the likes of Pravy Sektor, Svoboda and the oligarchs/mafiya. Of course, Putin is fully aware of Tyler’s truism and will not shirk from the dirty work ahead. Sergey Aksyonov, the new Crimean prime minister, is no angel. He has a past that earned him the nickname goblin. The MSM is quick to point this out, but won’t touch the background of those now in charge in Kiev. I think things are going to get a lot uglier in Ukraine and many in the West will be getting the vapors over what has been wrought in their name.
William Blum http://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/08/explaining-us-hypocrisy-on-ukraine/ has a piece up that offers some background on the neocon agenda. Although this quote is dated, it succinctly expresses a view of the world that seems accurate to me: ‘“Look,” said Russian president Vladimir Putin about NATO some years ago, “is this is a military organization? Yes, it’s military. … Is it moving towards our border? It’s moving towards our border. Why?” [Guardian Weekly (London), June 27, 2001].’
Babak Makkinejad,
Writing from one of the ‘midget Satans’, I have to say that it would appear that the behaviour not simply of the U.S. neoconservatives, but also of Israel, is a decisive refutation of ‘rational choice’ theory.
Rightly or wrongly, I detected an imputation in one of Colonel Lang’s recent posts that Fareed Zakaria had had part of his ‘education’ over here. However, to my relief I think this is wrong. This imbecile was wholly American-trained.
The recent exchange about Putin between him and Stephen Cohen, to which I think the Colonel was referring in that post, would be comic if it was not tragic. But perhaps it is both of those things. An extract:
‘ZAKARIA: You say he’s actually one of the most liberal rulers of Russia in its history.
‘COHEN: I wouldn’t put it that way. I mean, I wouldn’t use the word “liberal.” What I would say is, is if we view Putin in the context of the last 400 years of Russian history, with the exception of Gorbachev and possibly the first post-Soviet president, Yeltsin, well, there’s an argument there.
‘Putin is the least authoritarian; let’s call him the most soft authoritarian of Russian rulers in centuries.
‘And by the way, so far as it matters, because Jews and the status of Jews in Russia is often a barometer of how Russian rulership treats its society, Putin has been better for Russian Jews than any leader in Russian history. And if you want evidence of that, just ask Israel.’
(See http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1403/02/fzgps.01.html )
And this is the leader whom the likes of Nudelman/Nuland and McFaul dream of toppling.
How can anyone claim to defend ‘realism’ as a theory of international relations any more? Quite patently, it is simply another kind of ‘rationalist’ piffle.
I have to agree with Brzeninski: “…. interference in Ukrainian affairs should be considered a hostile act by a foreign power.” Perhaps he should be explaining this to Mrs. Kagan i.e. Victoria Nuland. I for one would like that $5 billion back. What the hell did Obama buy with that except a gang of fascists and a potential nuclear war? What congressional legislation authorized that spending?
David Habakkuk
I apologize. I was trying to denigrate elite institutions like the Ivies and went too far. pl
( I hope Harry replies to your question. I will just venture to guess that Stalin’s USSR Communists did indeed kill the local indigenous Communists in order to clear the ground for eventually sending in USSR’s colonial Communist administrators to rule Galicia without local Communist obstruction or opposition. I wait to see just how wrong I may be about that.)
ALL: Any open source rundown of US Armed Forces in NATO as of today?
I agree.
Israel’s security is near and dear to their hearts yet I do not see them flying to Tehran and kiss the hands of Ayatollah Khamenei; for that part of the world has had the longest continuous presence of Jews over the last 2500 years.
I think the time for a workable solution analogous to what obtains in Finland or what obtained in Austria during the Cold War is passed.
I suspect that TTG’s post above will come to pass and I think this is a story that will continue well past Obama’s presidency.
I do not think Realists are running the show in US.
I think there are Realists in UK but they cannot pursue realistic policies since UK leaders have determined that UK has to be absolutely “on the right side of the United States” – right or wrong.
WRC
You don’t understand the treaty. ALL of the US’s forces are committed to NATO if needed to fulfill the terms of the treaty. pl
Tyler, Yes, make friends with rough characters……and then betray and execute them when their usefullness is over like Saddaam Hussien.
Highlander, the whole point of our conversation on this matter at SST is that America is not behaving as a rational econmic actor itself while expecting Putin to behave that way. That is the source of our danger.
Kerry thinks that threats to Russian “trade” will deter the Bear. He is mistaken.
Babak,
Yes, I agree with you. TTG’s post wasn’t up at the time but his insight is likely to be prescient.
WRC
Perhaps you mean US forces under OPCON of Allied Command Europe or that are presently in Europe. This would be some small subset of total US forces but this is an irrelevant datum since treaty obligations to NATO are open ended. pl
I was just stating a fact with no opinion attached.
If anything, the current crop of Staties fits the same mold as the idiots during the Bush II years: Overeducated idiots who thought they were playing 11th dimensional chess and we peons couldn’t see the ‘big picture’.
Speaking as a mouthy grunt and probably wrong, aren’t the only conventional units who’ve seen combat recently in any numbers belonging to the French (infantry, airborne, and the Foreign Legion) and a division or two from the UK?
I’m defining combat as allowed to participate in actual operations without rules like “no movement at night” (Germany) or “no leaving the base” (Romania).
I like the Regimente Etranger as much as the next guy, but that seems a lot to put on their shoulders.
Mr. Habakkuk,
I had a chilling thought yesterday; namely, that the NeoConservatives/NeoLiberals occupy a mental space similar to that of Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello. They cherish a sense of grievance, but largely as a way of disguising their free-floating hostility.
In the play, Iago is a disturbing character, because he seems to be a force for sheer evil. He lays snares for the feet of all around him, exploiting their insecurities and subconsciously-held resentments in order that they they are manipulated to destroy each other for his amusement and spite, and to satisfy his jealous resentment of others happy and successful lives. And yes, he pulls the house down around his own head in the end, but he yet glories in his destructive powers to such a degree that what matters to him is that he has succeeded in destroying others.
In the current context, our NeoCon/NeoLib elites hate the Russians, largely because they exist outside of their sphere of control, and because they dare to pose a challenge to their hegemony. They hate them so much that they are willing to empower the NeoNazis of Pravy Sektor and Svoboda so that these groups will act as the elites’ catspaws to thwart the Russians. This despite the fact that Pravy Sektor and Svoboda are genuinely anti-Semitic and actively fascist in their beliefs, and are direct lineal descendents of the OUN from the times of the Second World War, people who terrorized and slaughtered both Jews and Catholic Poles out of bigotry and a desire to impress the Nazis as the people into whose hands they should entrust the governance of a Ukrainian state. These people, Pravy Sektor and Svoboda, should by all rights, based upon a clear-eyed remembrance of the role that their grandfathers played in those times, be their blood enemies, and yet in the elites’ nihilistic frenzy, they empower the fascists to act as a counterforce to the Russians. But like Iago, as a result of this hate-driven game, the house may collapse on them (and us), too.
As I said, chilling.
“conversations among captured German generals recorded at Trent Park”
“Thousands of them! First the Jews”
How convenient.
The cynic in me cringes to hear about jew devouring nazis who constantly seem to allow jews to escape for the least relevant reasons possible. The cynic in me knows that any speculator is better at lying than at being an honest man. The cynic in me doesn’t care about jews when in the middle of the last one of a series of potentially devastating crisis started by american jews.
I wonder how many thousands of american would have been saved from death and permanent disability if a little pogrom had occured in America. Thousands for each single israel obssessed neocon. That’s the math. A jew is worthy thousands of gentiles. Literally.
Oh, but I’m forgetting already! A pogrom did happen in Postville. Antisemite peasants demanded that the american imperial throne persecuted, imprisioned and tormented families of poor jews who in fact were just forced to settle in there and were only trying to carry on with their innocent meat business.
This without a single of those very shy and fearful jews having tried to explain to the peasants that those who chose to be good to them would be allowed to become their slaves when Bibi the Second came down from the skies. I wouldn’t laugh. That’s the way history has been written these days. That’s the way jews will talk about this event in the future. There is only one laugh left for us and it is the laugh about our own stupidity.
“The pogrom was primarily carried out by the Postville militia (PM) acting under American auspices. It happened quickly after the American occupation because the PM wanted to show the Americans that it shared their anti-Jewish perspectives and that it was worthy to be entrusted with the formation of a jew-free Postville.”
That’s history these days. Days when an speculator can be the better man and every story, no matter how badly told is supposed to be true or false according to who is telling it and who are the bad guys in it.
But why not a single american shows a bit of ultrage? Why they just explode in positive nods and accolades when someone like Stephen Cohen (a name so you will know from which tribe he is) and Kissinger takes the rarest seat of opposing view in the Media that could be better used by a neocon wise gentile? No. As I see americans just need to be slightly reassured that there is a single jew in their side for them to forget that this crisis owe just too much to the jewish community for americans to let things go by.
That’s where I fit Mr. Habakkuk’ post. A ton of jewish victimisation and the lesson that Nulan doesn’t really think too hard about the holocaust narrative (as you readers ought to do!)
“Thousands of them! First the Jews”
How convenient, how convenient, how convenient.
O let them neocons escape because they just smell too bad. The putrit smell of gentile death they so much like. They are, after all, good speculators.
No. My uncle told me that the Russians took away the local communists and some local political leaders who were sympathetic to them. He suggested they wanted to make sure there were no local leaders to organise opposition. I report only what he told me. Why add my own speculation?
He didnt talk to me about the Polish people killed by the Germans but by then he was on the run walking across the countryside, so he might not have known about it. He obtained Catholic papers in Kracow, and assumed the name Kajick (short for Casimir). He used that name on and off as a nickname for the rest of his life.
My uncle was a very good man and a man who at 16 years of age would have bested you in any endevour you care to engage in. He survived the second world war walking cross country and went on to have a family and build a very successful business. Why do I think your achievements would look thin compared to his?
Frankly you would probably not approve of him for many reasons. But I really dont think he would care.
Over the years I have worked in many banks. These banks employ many traders. The majority of them are goy as am I. I dont hear you condemning Jamie Dimon or Hank Paulsen or Louis Bacon. I dont hear you complaining about the structure of American finance capitalism? Are you a communist? If not, shouldnt you be?
You dont need to believe me. I wasnt there. Even if I was you wouldnt believe me or my uncle. I couldnt care less what an anonymous commentator on the internet says. I report what I report. Take it or leave it.
I think you think that American policy is twisted by support for Israel and is against America’s own interests. I happen to agree (if thats what you are trying to say). But how is that an rationale for anti-semitism? And what makes you think that the schoolteachers and communists were Gentile you half-witted moron? Most of the communists in Lvov were Jews. They were the ones educated enough to read.
The sons and daughters of the marriage of Trotsky and Strauss are enjoying the refight in the Ukraine. They gave the Ukraine the Holodomor once; they can do it again. Long standing ties? Bandera has been dead for 55 years, that is 3 generations that have passed since he was of any relevance.
Tyler,
A number of French units are committed to action in Africa. I’m sure our other NATO allies will be committing thier best. You’ll see them speaking on tv and radio as part of the ongoing information operations being conducted against the American public, like that propaganda piece on 60 minutes that aired Sunday. They interviewed three white guys and zero people opposed to the ‘revolution’. CBS couldn’t even find a single Berkut member to interview. As I said before, I’m sure the Ukrainians will great us as liberators.
JerseyJeffersonian,
A lot to think about.
In the poem ‘A Prayer for My Daughter’ which W.B. Yeats wrote in 1919, he said that ‘to be choked with hate/May yet be of all evil chances chief.’
A great many people who have been influential in shaping American policy alike towards the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia are either refugees from Soviet/Russian oppression, or their descendants. That a lot of them are deeply Russophobic is, to put it mildly, unsurprising.
That said, Yeats, while he could be a silly ass, was writing out of a complex awareness of the hatreds in Ireland left by its tormented history, and the need to find an escape from them. It would help if more people in the United States, as in Britain, were looking for ways to lay to rest the ghosts left by the tormented history of Eastern Europe in the twentieth century.
‘b’,
“I believe that the neocons know that they work with the devil and don’t mind to do so.”
While I would not say with confidence that you are necessarily wrong, I think that for the most part these people live in cocoons of one kind or another, and still think that they can control their instruments – and the passions which their support of these is liable to arouse.
The question you raise about who trained the ‘Right Sector’ people, and what relation if any this has to the history of collaboration between American – and British – intelligence agencies, and nationalist organisations which had collaborated with the Germans in the Second World War, is clearly a critical one.
In his press conference on Tuesday, it was put to Putin that the evidence clearly suggested that Russian forces were operating in the Crimea. He gave what seemed to me to be a perfunctory denial – and when the questioner implied that the forces were clearly too well-trained to be local self-defence units, went on to say:
‘My dear colleague, look how well trained the people who operated in Kiev were. As we all know they were trained at special bases in neighbouring states: in Lithuania, Poland and in Ukraine itself too. They were trained by instructors for extended periods. They were divided into dozens and hundreds, their actions were coordinated, they had good communication systems. It was all like clockwork. Did you see them in action? They looked very professional, like special forces. Why do you think those in Crimea should be any worse?’
(See http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/6763 )
What Putin was leaving to be read between the lines, I think was ‘the people in the Maidan were trained in Lithuania and Poland with Western assistance – so we had to nip things in the bud in the Crimea by bringing our own SF in.’
My hunch, for what very little it is worth, is that some very curious linkages are indeed involved. However, I do not think that this means that some kind of cohesive ‘CIA’ is manipulating things. I think there is a whole undergrowth of what the great Janine Wedel called ‘flex groups’, crossing boundaries between different nationalities, the public and private sectors, and indeed on occasion legitimate and criminal activity, which may not be entirely under anyone’s control.
Harry,
I didn’t think you were adding your own speculation – simply that you might have made a slip, as I not infrequently do when writing about emotionally charged matters.
In the event, ‘different clue’ was reading you better than I was.
As you note, your uncle would have had no reason to be aware from personal experience of the liquidation of the Polish intelligentsia in which the Germans and the Ukrainain nationalists collaborated. As he was quite clearly a very remarkable personality, and a man of great independence of mind, it seems eminently likely that what he told you was the truth.
I would love to have the time to delve more closely into what happened in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet takeover of Western Poland. And this is all the more so, as what your uncle told you – and also the gloss by ‘different clue’ – raise some very interesting issues.
Sometimes, it is precisely the most unpleasant aspects of unpleasant regimes that make them less dangerous to others. What can very easily be documented is that the fear of heresy among communists, both at home and abroad was a driving factor in Stalin’s policy from the early Thirties onwards.
We know that Stalin suspected Mao Zedong would display ‘Titoist’ tendencies. It is also clear that from February 1947 onwards, George Kennan – generally, if misleadingly, portrayed as the architect of ‘containment’ – was suggesting that precisely because of his fear of heresy Stalin would not have wanted to see a united communist Germany.
If indeed the Soviets were terrified that an independent communist leadership might emerge in Lvov – although I suspect that they deported them, rather than simply liquidating them – one can perhaps see Kennan’s point.
Colonel Lang,
Not all.
I have got accustomed to discovering that particularly useless people — like John Nagl and Susan Rice, and perhaps also Bill Clinton — were ‘Rhodes Scholars’, that it comes as a blessed relief to find that we had nothing to do with moulding Zakaria.
harry,
It seems that ‘Anonymous’ did not bother to read my post.
The reason I introduced the quote from the German general bugged at Trent Park was quite precisely that it brought out that the Germans and their Ukrainian allies were butchering all the Poles they could lay their hands on as well as all the Jews.
As to Stephen Cohen, he has been the probably the most consistent American critic of the policies adopted by the United States towards post-Soviet Russia, and has been a particularly incisive critic of Western policy over the past months towards the Ukraine.
A further reason for quoting him is that Cohen brings out, very well, the way in which the Putin portrayed in the Western media is largely a figment of people’s imaginations. When people like Nudelman/Nuland are happy to ally with the heirs of those responsible for the July 1941 pogrom in Lviv, in opposition to the figure whom well-informed judges regard as the Russian leader most friendly to Jews ever, one does begin to think that American elites have gone crazy.
On this point, the judgement of Stephen Cohen meshes well with that articulated by Dmitri Trenin, who directs in the Carnegie Moscow Center, last August:
‘Putin sees the United States as having lost its way, and the European Union as not having found one. He now views America and Russia as culturally opposite to each other and Russia as more European in terms of its core values than present-day E.U.-land. Surprisingly, he still seems to harbor respect, however, for Israel and the Jewish people generally – even when he disagrees with their leaders, as on the actual danger posed by Iran, or thinks they are running too high risks, as in Syria.
(See http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/139059/putin-obama-russia?all=1 )
Thanks PL but I only wanted those US Armed Forces forward deployed in EU and UK!
WRC
OK, but that is a meaningless datum. pl
“…one does begin to think that American elites have gone crazy.”
They have. Though it appears to me more of a desperate double or nothing roll of the dice. One key element for the Neocon faction is to creatively destroy the use of diplomacy in the short term. The pressure is building on Benjamin to settle with the Palestinians and if he does he will end up like Yitzhak courtesy of his settlers. So his friends over here cause a major crisis hoping for Cold War II and another generational freeze on taking action.
But they don’t calculate how much the public will tolerate more economic hardships before the line snaps.
I realise in retrospect that the anon commentator is not American – at least not by birth.
If he is Ukrainian from Lvov, I am afraid to say that I found my uncle perfectly credible, whether he likes it or not.
Oh I understand how you feel.
Mr. Habbakkuk,
I feel like I understand where anon is coming from, in a country where every year seems to pump out another piece of Holocaust porn regarding an “untold story” where scrappy Jews with sharp sticks annihilate a SS panzer division (that just got done burning a town to the ground for no reason other than Jews under the bed).
Combine the Court Jew effect with the narrative in which Jews have had no agency since Christ, as well as the total ruin of anyone who notices Jews play by their own rules (look at the ADL’s attitude towards illegal immigration in the US vs the same in Israel), and you have a recipe for a dangerous pressure cooker.
One issue no one appears to have yet addressed is that the American Army, like the Australian Army has focussed on forms of counterinsurgency and the associated equipment strategy and tactics, or at least give that appearance from where I sit.
What happens if the US Army suddenly has to confront a first world force like Russia with technology that approaches or surpasses our own? Especially in an era where each casualty is looked upon as a national tragedy?
I am reminded that one reason given for the French failure in 1870 was that their officer corps had become lazy – fighting brown folk in Africa, however the truth of this I have not explored. One hopes that there are better and brighter people than me thinking this through.
In comparison to the Crazies, how do you rate Putin?
DH
I think Putin is a logical man who is outplaying his opponents. I am reminded of the Union Army prisoner of war at Harper’s Ferry who was standing by the side of the road with thousands of other Yankee prisoners when Stonewall Jackso rode by on his scrawny little horse. “He sure don’t look like much” the prisoner remarked. “Well, if we had him we wouldn’t be in this fix” another said. pl
The American military has swallowed whole the line of religious egalitarianism. We have been cursed/fortunate that our domination of air power has allowed us to get away with what we have while ignoring the need for any structural changes in how we do things. We have never gone up against a competing air force in generations so that need never pressed itself.An example would be the reorganization of the Army’s MTOE after Rommel smashed it at Kasserine Pass.
It seems like now the idea that we need an effective infantry is somehow “controversial” and instead of worrying about whether or not policy decisions will get men killed its now about fairness and “promotion opportunities”.
PL! Another reason for them to be stateside?
High praise, indeed! The Putinista movement in the US is amusing to see. Count me in.
Channeling Putin?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHR0qjr79fQ
DH,
As and aside, my wife and I once sat at a dinner table with Dr Wedel when attending a George Mason University sponsored function. She is indeed an interesting person and excellent lecturer. She is also generous in that she shared her special Polish vodka with us that she kept in her purse under the table. It was a great evening.
Regards,
All,
Here’s some interesting tidbits from Ukraine.
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/03/ukraine-sitrep-march-11-1350-est-and.html
Is it true that Mikhail Dobkin (the ex-governor of Kharkov who had resigned to run for President) has been kidnapped by the insurgents?
Fred,
It appears so and would make sense from the Right Sectors point of view to keep all challengers out.
Did you catch the last part, pensions cut by 50%? Freedom ain’t free, so welcome to the European Union of Austerity.
So as I understood Anon, he felt that my uncles story was made up, and that the jews of Lvov were not really wiped out and that these stories have all been exaggerated.
Generally this point of view is called Holocaust denial. Its not a matter of feeling. You may understand how he feels but its still a question of history. Who killed my uncles family? All of them.
Secondly I can understand the point of view that American interests have been subordinated to Israeli interests. However I bristle when someone equates Israel with Jews. Israelis are often Jews but not all Jews are Israelis, and not all jews believe their first loyalty is to Israel before their country. Its unfair and downright rude of you to suggest as much.
There are plenty of jewish servicemen in the US military. And there were in the past too.
Finally not even all Israelis are in sympathy with Neocon points of view. I am neither Israeli nor Jewish and I am certainly no Neocon. However I am of Jewish descent.
What exactly do I have to be ashamed of ?
Thomas, definitely got the pension part. It’s coming to a U.S. municipality near you as they will follow the Obama administration’s example being set in Detroit.
Fred,
Yes, with their big goal the public pension known as Social Security. In a Bloomberg news show the other week, a former US ambassador to the Ukraine made a snide comment that Putin’s $15 billon bailout offer was coming from Russian pension funds. A Freudian slip to show what he is concerned about, though at least they got Germany on the hook to bailout Ukraine through their pensions.
Thomas,
They apparently think those dependent upon social security in the US will just sit on thier asses when SS goes under to fund our oligarchs and banks. No wonder the push is on to ban guns.
They are the same ideological imbeciles that feel Russia should accept their fascist coup in Ukraine.
Unfortunately, it is wait and see mode to what event breaks the camel’s back for the Realities ‘R US crowd.
All
This article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph notes that the West is serious about climbing the escalatory ladder.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/10696552/Russia-counts-cost-as-West-tightens-sanctions-noose.html
German Chancellor Angela Merkel spelled out the danger for Russia in a speech that silenced pro-Kremlin voices in her own coalition and left no doubt that Europe is now fully behind the US on punitive measures.
“If Russia continues on its course of the past weeks, that will not only be a great catastrophe for Ukraine. It will cause massive damage to Russia, both economically and politically,” she said. “None of us wants it to come to this, but we are determined to act. Let me be absolutely clear; the territorial integrity of Ukraine is not up for discussion.”
Holocaust Denial is not saying the Holocaust never happened but its become mythologized to the point that pointing out any of the glaring contradictions in the narrative means you want to make soap and lampshades out of every Jew ever.
The problem is that while you say Jews don’t act as a monolithic gestalt, the fact is that many many many of the leftist/globalist/social justice bullshit organizations have Jews at the helm, yet the bar continues to be “Well until allJews sign off on the actions of 95% of Jews you cant point this fact out, you anti Semite!”
Fine, its accepted you all don’t think alike. Now maybe the five percent of you. Who don’t think the way the rest of Jews do can tell the others to knock off the Frankfurt School, cultural Marxism globalist bullshit while agitating for more gun control, hate speech laws, and unfettered immigration.
So I think that Germany has just won the final battle of WWWII. With the United States its main decisive ally.
Russia is not allowed to have an actual empire. It also is not allowed to have even a trade alliance.
It is not allowed to have any sovereign attachments whatsoever to its National momuments steeped in their soldiers blood. It can look forward to watching some clowns from “right-sector” hold a torch-light vigil in Crimea while throwing beer bottles towards Sevastopol. And do nothing about it because Arseniy Yatsenyuk, with John Kerry standing behind him, can hold up a United Nations charter and spout off its contents, completely unappreciative that the only reason he can do that is because millions of Russians gave their own lives for his country’s, his own live, and his mother’s and father’s own lives.
Russia will now observe a government in Ukraine with overt Nazi sympathizers in its ranks. It will have its language and culture destroyed and denigrated in every country up to its doorstep. It will have every country in Europe allied militarily against it. It has Germany now dominating Europe.
Putin is finished. The leaders of Russia that replace him will be desperate, hateful, vengeful and unstable for several generations to come. I can imaging Putin and many patriotic and self-aware Russians quaking in anger right now. Itching for war. And they will know who to blame. The United States. They may turn to China (and perhaps Europe, once Europe develops a recognition of what has happened) for some sympathy or redress, but it will not likely be satisfactory.
A lot of this is Barack Obama’s fault. He’s pissed away 30 years of detente in a few weeks for absolutely nothing. Not through any agency of his, but through his uncleverness, uncaringness, his misunderstanding of history and total lack of empathy, his brinksmanship, his vanity. And his lack of awareness or control over what must evidently be a firmly entrenched fifth column in the CIA that did much to orchestrate this Ukraine business. And, unfortunately, a lack of a sane opposition in the Republican party that has been nowhere to be seen in this crisis.
Every citizen in the United States and much of the western world can now look forward to nursing a new little pit of doom in their stomachs, and thank Obama for that.
lol what?
Do you really believe Merkel “won” anything when Putin can tell her to freeze in the dark, to say nothing of the Red Book they have on her?
This is much ado about nothing.
tyler
“Red Book?” pl
Tyler, Colonel Lang,
Having been up in Shropshire being introduced to my first great-niece, I have not been able to comment on recent exchanges.
However, the issues raised in your exchange about the relationship between Putin and Merkel do seem to need a rapid comment.
Both in the former Soviet Union and in its former empire, one has what might be called an ‘I’ve got something on you society.’ If one is dealing with the ‘political classes’, as distinct from those who kept out of politics and kept their heads down, the number of absolute innocents is rather smaller than some of those involved would have you believe.
As people in the U.S. and the U.K. have never been under the kind of pressures which led quite normal people to behave in ways that disgust themselves, as well as others, they are suckers for propaganda in which one set of people who behaved in such ways portray themselves as whiter than white, and their adversaries as blacker than black.
A corollary of this is an ambiguous attitude to the West on the part of such people. Commonly, they have looked up to us, because our lives were not compromised and corrupted in the obvious ways in which theirs were. But, by the same token, they are prone to see us as fools, who do not know what the real world is about – and they can, not uncommonly, salvage self-respect by seeing both us, and themselves, in the context of what is in the end a not unrealistic understanding of twentieth-century history.
It is a mark of the absolute idiocy of American and British elites that they are desperate to convince themselves that Vladimir Putin hates them. This is a delusional belief they need to entertain, in order to sustain their narcissistic view of themselves.
The actual truth is that Putin has consistently sought good relations both with the United States, and the European Union.
Having, in recent years, largely despaired of both American and British elites, I had hoped that elites in Germany, who are themselves a product of a complex and bitter history, might help find a way out of this mess. However, the evidence is building up that my optimism about the Germans was misplaced. I would like to think that Merkel is not as stupid and cowardly as Obama and Cameron – but find it more and more difficult to find any rational grounds for thinking so.
crf,
“Putin is finished.”
I doubt that Putin is finished. You don’t hear of any riots in Moscow to overthrow him?
Meanwhile here’s another Ukraine upate from a non-US/EU/neocon source:
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/
Wow. First of all, Holocaust denial IS saying the Holocaust never happened. Holocaust revisionism is pointing out “any of the glaring contradictions”. While revisionists will often be branded deniers, it is still helpful to use the right words to avoid saying something stupid.
And while we’re on the subject of stupid: “the actions of 95% of Jews”? They are all united in pushing “leftist/globalist/social justice bullshit”, are they? Putting aside the intrinsic absurdity of that claim, one of its results is that Bibi Netanyahu and Sheldon Adelson should be counted in your 5% of “good Jews”, as I doubt they have much interest in either Marxism, cultural or otherwise, or in social justice.
You are a smart lad, Tyler. Unfortunately you have the intellectual, philosophical and spiritual depth of a puddle of water. That leads you to extremely simplified, unbalanced conclusions. For example, that the “five percent” should stand up and condemn the “ninety-five percent” or be considered complicit. Should Muslims also stand up all the time and condemn every action of every fool who shares their faith? Because if that standard was also applied to Christians, you would never sit down again.
Sir,
My understanding is that the KGB has dossiers on any political activities current German politicians were involved in back in the East German days. These are apparently called ‘Red Books’, for obvious reasons.
I remember it coming up the last time Germany and Russia were at odds. Whether or not its relative might be Alex Jones style speculation, but ah well. I think crf is reading this situation horribly wrong.
Sheldon Adelson loves himself some more immigration, and describes himself as socially liberal. Try again. There’s a world of difference between Western Israelis and those who live in Israel (look at the Jews agitating for more immigration into Europe from Muslim countries – something unthinkable to Israelis). Stop being disingenuous.
This is a lot of words that ignores who’s running American Atheists, the ACLU, CNN, SPLC, PFAW, all the different Soros tentacle foundations he funds, etc etc etc, to say nothing of their founders status in the Communist Party and the Frankfurt School.