MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
What if the scrappy demonstrators now drawing fire from government security forces are, in fact, neo-nazis and their allies? It looks that way to many.
Comments
Guidance: John McCain stands with the insurgents...
by jollyroger on Thu, 02/20/2014 - 9:47pm
Well, let's start with this: I never shared the admiration for scrappy street fighting as accomplishing much good since I tried it once as a youth. But I've got to admit the iconography of this one really does rival some of the great romantic revolution narratives. And the extra passion necessary to get that result most often comes from nationalism. Something I think you know I agree with you about somewhat.
That said, if they were all so fascistic, why doesn't Putin like them and why do they want to join the E.U.? I dunno why, maybe it's just me, but joining the E.U. just doesn't seem an extremely nationalist goal.
I do know that we cannot fathom the depth of hatred and/or mistrust of Russians in the general vicinity, going back many generations. My Galacian Polish grandpa used to spit after any mention of the Russians of the early 20th century. To him, the Soviets were a teeny bit better, at least human (if producing a cruel life for his relatives back in the old country,) in that they thought everyone should learn to read and write. Before that, if you weren't Russian, you were basically slave material, apparently. Think not just simple ethnic prejudice, but a little more nuanced along these lines: Native American views of "the white man." Centuries of oppression and being treated as a lesser entity can take their toll.
by artappraiser on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 12:36am
if they were all so fascistic, why doesn't Putin like them
Well, there are National Socialist Fascists, and KGB fascists...maybe Putin doesn't like them cause "Klitsch" looks better than he does without a shirt...
I, of course, unlike you, have not outgrown the appeal of the memories of Paris in "68
by jollyroger on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 12:39am
Putin likes whomever wants to move closer to Russia and away from the West, regardless of ideology.
It's just like with the opposition: Many incompatible ideologists are united in their opposition to Y which gives them a weight they wouldn't have separately.
by Peter Schwartz on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 9:44pm
Chris Hayes weighs in:
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/whats-going-on-in-ukraine-162594883833
by jollyroger on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 1:46am
Thanks for the link very informative. After viewing it, I wonder what would you propose, in how to solve the crisis ?
I can see why the protesters are upset because the President unilaterally made decisions against the peoples Constitution? Trying to go back to a dictatorship.
by Resistance on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 2:17am
The latest news is that the crisis is over...we'll see
https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera
by jollyroger on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 2:54am
but Russia declined to endorse the accord and many protesters want Mr. Yanukovych out- -Accord Is Signed in Ukraine but Doubts Are Strong, New York Times, Feb. 21, 2014
Meanwhile, in the Ukrainian parliament:
In a further sign of President Viktor F. Yanukovych’s diminished influence, the Ukrainian Parliament voted to allow the release of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who has been imprisoned for more than two years. In a 310-54 vote, lawmakers decriminalized the count for which she was incarcerated.
It was not immediately clear when Ms. Tymoshenko might be released from a penitentiary in the eastern city of Kharkiv where she has been serving her sentence. But she is still considered one of Mr. Yanukovych’s most potent adversaries.
The vote aimed at releasing her came hours after word of the political deal reached between Mr. Yanukovych and the main opposition leader
Yulia (wikipedia) is not easy to forget once you've seen a picture of her:
The Wikipedia entry makes clear that Putin liked working with Yulia.
by artappraiser on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 12:17pm
by artappraiser on Sat, 02/22/2014 - 4:24pm
NYT report from Kiev in today's print basically describes same: initial protestors of right wing national groups joined by left/liberals and unhappy unemployed youth, etc., as the government reacted: Converts Join With Militants in Kiev Clash
There's a clear problem going forward in that the representatives of the "opposition" involved in any truces or talks are still those right wingers alone. There is no representation of the others. This makes for a result like Egypt--strange bedfellows do not make for a lasting marriage.
BTW the article has parts that describe precisely why I am no fan of "street fighting" and also what I see in the imagery from the conflict:
I can't fathom how someone who says they are anti-war can romanticize violent street protests. At their heart, the latter are exactly the same thing as war. Anyone who does it or lionizes it is not truly anti-war. It's just that plain and simple to me. These people are the ones who are truly "anti-war":
I see a very strong equivalence here with violent anti-Vietnam war protests which turned off enough people that could have been with the movement. There did not have to be a "silent majority" supporting continuation of the war. The violent protests helped make them a majority.
The gnarly thing is: Egypt revolution Part I did this part right. And it still didn't work out. But again, violence was part of that problem, turning people (hence the "terrorist" label.) Threatening people's security is threatening civilization, always comes back atcha. Only if police cross a line where they are causing more deterioration of civilization than strengthening it will a majority turn on them. Street fighting isn't just as ugly as war, it's usually even more stupid than most wars.
by artappraiser on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 11:36am
Well, quiet as it is kept my Vietnam episode was with the Committee for Non-Violent Action out of Voluntown, Connecticut silently picketing the Electric Boat Company in Groton, so my street fighting man cred is thin enough to read through...and, if anything, since that time (as more or less liberally sprinkled through the posts here) I've come closer to Gandhi.
Indeed, once you have made the strategic decision that armed struggle is simply not on the table, violence as a street tactic is stoopid.
I just like to talk big. (But you knew that already...)
Edit to add:"We'll always have Paris..."
by jollyroger on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 12:58pm
Contradicts the suggestions of Luhn's piece in The Nation and very much elucidates my query about about Putin. (It's his rival Eurasian Union idea, stupids.) If you really want to understand the situation, highly recommended.
Here is an early graph I feel it is important to quote, countering a lot of what we have been reading, including in Luhr's piece:
The author's bio. quip would suggest he is not one to glide over any Neo Nazism:
by artappraiser on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 6:03pm
Synder also wrote on topic for the Feb. 20 issue; non-subscribers can access the first five paragraphs, here is the first one along with the photo illustration:
by artappraiser on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 6:17pm
As we're giving Putin a PR coup in Sochi, he's pulling the strings in Ukraine. He's been pushing hard against Ukraine's drift towards the EU for a decade now.
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 02/22/2014 - 4:50pm
This really is excellent. It unravels much of the misleading use of labels and explains apparent contradictions. Being nationalist AND wanting to be part of the EU are not contradictory because only a country that is a country can join and prosper in the EU. The original members of the EU have hardly lost their national identities, even if when they share a currency and easy trade relations.
Today, IMO, the labels "communist" and "fascist" hardly mean anything. Better labels might be "democracy" and "dictatorship." The key point is how power is wielded. Putin, as far as I can see, is a fascistic communist, but more accurately, he's a dictator whose primary goal is exercising and holding onto power.
The demagoguery against Jews and LGBTers is also ideologically content-less. That is, the regime leaders don't really hate these people per se. They simply use these archaic passions to control people and hold on to power. It's a similar dynamic, in a way, to the one that holds together the strange set of bedfellows in the Maidan: There's nothing like a common enemy, the more evil and insidious the better, to bring people together and get them moving in the same direction (under your command).
Once you have peace or you've achieved your initial goal, e.g., toppling a regime or stamping out homosexuality, then the cracks in the coalition appear and folks begin wandering off in their own directions and a new enemy must be found to bring everyone back together.
by Peter Schwartz on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 10:15pm
That is an excellent primer.
I think this part deserves repeating:
What I think it means when the wolf cries wolf is that the wolf has gotten much, much better at PR.
by EmmaZahn on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 10:45pm
I like your point and your choice of clip.
Thinking about it is giving me a headache, though. Along the lines of: in a new globalized world, when some powers-that-be of places with certain ideological divides, or with just certain practical goals, know so much about different, foreign ideological divides, that they can manipulate them to their advantage. Without the fooled knowing any better, because they imagine the ideological divides are the same everywhere as their own.
BTW, and maybe related, I just recalled that I had seen Ta Nehisi Coates @ The Atlantic discuss Synder's book Bloodlands in several very striking blog posts, where he wrote while reading it, as if many things in were hitting him like a bolt of lighting. Including how it was challenging his Afro-Amerocentric education, expanding his thought processes. I found the posts very fascinating reading. I did a quick google to find links to four of those posts if anyone else is interested: here, here, here and here, though I don't know if that is all of them.
Guess it's time for me to stop reading others' interpretations of Bloodlands and read the book myself...I shouldn't be presuming it wouldn't challenge my own education/knowledge on topic...
by artappraiser on Sat, 02/22/2014 - 11:00am
I prefer the progressive opposition, but even rightist nationalists can have legitimate beefs. The Nation article seems to disapprove of "anti-Russian" sentiment, but doesn't talk about the reasons Ukrainians don't like Russia.
by Aaron Carine on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 6:03pm
See Synder's NYRB piece which I posted above your comment, just seconds before you commented. I for one was convinced by it that Luhr has drawn a simplistic and very incorrect picture.
by artappraiser on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 6:06pm
Well, that article certainly complicates things.
Now what?
Edit to add: do we go back to rooting for the scrappy insurgents? This is very confusing, just when you had me backed into a corner with my buddy Mohandas here...
by jollyroger on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 9:57pm
We root for the Ukrainian people to achieve democracy.
by Peter Schwartz on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 10:16pm
Why should they get it before we do?
by jollyroger on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 11:05pm
Why not?
Enough of American exceptionalism.
by Peter Schwartz on Sat, 02/22/2014 - 6:00pm
Because the world needs it more in the USA-with or without democracy, Ukraine has not been a problem for the world since the fall of Lord Novgorod the Great (ed note, Lord Novgorod is a city, not a person...carry on...)
by jollyroger on Sat, 02/22/2014 - 7:07pm
I was in Novgorod. It has a Kremlin and was a former capital of Russia.
by Peter Schwartz on Sat, 02/22/2014 - 7:19pm
Keeerect, (step aside as the duck descends with your $50.00)
As a bonus,Alexander Nevsky
Edit to add: Mel Gibson, eat you cheesy heart out...
by jollyroger on Sat, 02/22/2014 - 7:37pm
I've been to the Prospekt, too.
I was studying Russian in high school back in the late 60s, and our teacher arranged a trip to the USSR. Brezhnev's time. We were located in this resort on the Finnish Gulf outside of the Leningrad and took side trips to Novgorod, Moscow, and our choice of Georgia or Tashkent/Samarkand, which is what I took.
A few weird tales...it was all amazing to my young eyes.
by Peter Schwartz on Sat, 02/22/2014 - 10:06pm
A couple of maps illustrating the Ukranian divide:
by EmmaZahn on Fri, 02/21/2014 - 9:35pm
The Parliament has apparently taken its own power back (and perhaps grabbed more than it had before it caved?):
by artappraiser on Sat, 02/22/2014 - 11:20am
importantly, the military is supportive:
by artappraiser on Sat, 02/22/2014 - 11:27am
Simon Shuster of Time has an interesting twitter feed as regards counter-revolution support in Russia, like this
by artappraiser on Sat, 02/22/2014 - 4:33pm
I did not have an advance copy of this article when I made similar comments upthread, I swear.
by artappraiser on Tue, 02/25/2014 - 2:42pm
From that NYTs article:
Maybe everything she discussed was just of a theoretical nature. Maybe, but how did they spend that five billion dollars 'promoting democracy in Ukraine" and was it all for high minded reasons? Has that been our consistent way of affecting governments in the past? All do-goodery?
The one thing I am convinced of is that lots of reporters, pundits, and all propagandists portray such stories as being simply of one side versus one other and then for the justification for taking sides they paint one side as good and the other as evil-bad. I think there is more than one string being pulled and the resulting puppet dance is hard to interpret.
Here is what Max Blumenthal says.
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/us-backing-neo-nazis-ukraine...
by A Guy Called LULU on Tue, 02/25/2014 - 4:38pm
I was not in any way purporting the Obama administration are major isolationists, they are not like "if they really want a relationship, we will still ignore them". Here's a great example no one is paying attention to:
Obama, Biden Meet with Georgian PM, Civil Georgia, Tbilisi / 25 Feb.'14 /
but note, from the article, they do not get into trumpeting anything that might stoke neo-conservative dreams of democracy promotion:
I think you imagine too much power being given to a multi-administration career civil service officer like Nuland to execute her own rogue private policy decisions rather than gather and report her knowledge of her area of designation. When she started out working under Strobe Talbott during the Clinton administration and was placed in current position by Hillary Clinton, not exactly the neo-con faithful. The Obama administration is not Bush, and I fully believe they would not let her "do Bush," as the NYT article says
Did you also notice from the NYT article:
If you want to really understand wassup, I would suggest you should be more concerned with Malinowski than Nuland.
I just do not buy that things are always going to be as simple as "another Cheney conspiracy" forever in eternity, sorry. I really think it leads to misunderstanding by even approaching things that way.
If you're going to talk about biased journalism, then I will give my opinion that I think a lot of the sources you seem to like to frequent as "alternative" sources to MSM are actually driven by a desire to not let go of Bush derangement syndrome, since it was the source of their claim to fame while Bush was around, which got them their readers, and they just can't let go, can't widen their vision to see a different picture and paradigm, bypassing new and different threats which might also alarm them if they weren't so fixated on old narratives. Like, a meeting with the Georgian government that was actually held and where actual real policies and initiatives were discussed, not some supposed conspiracy with an Asst. Sec. of State with neo-con sympathies going rogue. Always hunting for conspiracies while ignoring reality is not a smart modus operandi, mho, you've got to get a handle on realities first to even be able to understand a conspiracy if there was one.
by artappraiser on Tue, 02/25/2014 - 5:25pm
I think you imagine too much power being given to a multi-administration career civil service officer like Nuland to execute her own rogue private policy decisions rather than gather and report her knowledge of her area of designation. When she started out working under Strobe Talbott during the Clinton administration and was placed in current position by Hillary Clinton, not exactly the neo-con faithful.
So, after Nuland reports back does she return and give the message she is told to deliver? And, regarding Clinton, there are a lot of folks who suggest she is quite a bit neocon-y
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/jacob-heilbrunn/hillary-clinton-neocon-...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/does-hillarys-silence-on-_b_...
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/is-hillary-clinton-neocon
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/22/1233066/-Hillary-Clinton-is-a-N...
The Obama administration is not Bush, and I fully believe they would not let her "do Bush," as the NYT article says.
Maybe correct but your faith in the New York times is a bit stronger than mine.
If you want to really understand wassup, I would suggest you should be more concerned with Malinowski than Nuland.
I really do want to understand wassup. Could you explain why I should pay more attention to the guy not yet on the job than to the person actually carrying out the diplomacy?
I just do not buy that things are always going to be as simple as "another Cheney conspiracy" forever in eternity, sorry.
I said above, "The one thing I am convinced of is that lots of reporters, pundits, and all propagandists portray such stories as being simply of one side versus one other and then ..." That was an apparently failed intention to say that I do not think anything about the opposing sides is simple.
... mho, you've got to get a handle on realities first to even be able to understand a conspiracy if there was one.
I try, oh my God how I try, but http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbst9_4-non-blondes-what-s-up_news
by A Guy Called LULU on Tue, 02/25/2014 - 8:57pm
You may or may not enjoy this take on that article:
Steve Sailer: iSteve: Violent overthrow of elected government = "Democracy"
by EmmaZahn on Tue, 02/25/2014 - 9:06pm
Always guaranteed to put an unusual spin on anything....
by artappraiser on Thu, 02/27/2014 - 5:12am
Pretty well tips me over to believing Synder's version is far more accurate than Luhn's
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-message-from-ukrainian.html
Especially given that Angry Arab is a proud extreme socialist (hence he often uses "comrade") and would not normally repost something that dissed the World Socialist website unless he believed it.
That said, the far right groups that were involved in the protests are going to cause trouble now, no doubt about it.
by artappraiser on Thu, 02/27/2014 - 5:17am