The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    McCain: No reversal of Nikita Khrushchev shall stand!

    By jollyroger on Mon, 03/17/2014 - 9:00pm |

    With his unerring instinct for military engagement, John McCain has not let us down in the current situation.  John McCain, destroying military assets in two different centuries...

    Apparently unaware that Crimea is historically Russian, and not Ukrainian, (a state of affairs that was reversed by edict of that renowned and apparently well beloved statesman, the Soviet Union Party Chairman Khrushchev from Kalinovka, Ukraine) McCain is now moved to demand we insert "defensive" military assets into the post coup Ukraine.

    When last we checked in on our plucky hero, he was fresh from the Baghdad rug markets, and demanding more vigorous US intervention in the Syrian civil war, coincidentally on the side of our erstwhile tormentors,  local Al Q. franchise.

    Indirectly, Putin bailed him out on that one.

    McCain's main characteristic in all this, (including his inability to keep from flying airplanes into water) is lack of situational awareness. In this, sadly, he is not alone.

    To be clear, and (offering for debate).

    1. We have midwived an illegal coup in Ukraine to the detriment of a democratically elected government. We do not have the moral high ground (not for the first time) (John Kerry, I'm talkin' to YOU!.)

    2. Any intervention that purports to subvert the overwhelmingly expressed will of the Crimean people to sever their fealty to the coup plotters is ahistorical and anti-democratic.

    3. We need a new cold war like a hole in the head.

    4. Putin is ten times the statesman that John McCain could have ever hoped to be, even before the Alzheimer's took his alcohol damaged brain.

    5. This shit could really get rank, if Obama lets himself get stampeded by the baying hounds of small dicked Teabagger xenophobes.

    6. If John McCain thinks it's a good idea, don't do it!

    Comments

    While McCain is japing for the rubes Obama is snatching purses from the Russian Nobles to buy insurance for the peasants at home and the world watches a once powerful empire descend into farce. Obama and his neocons, numbskulls and Neulands is no match for the wily Bear.


    by Peter (not verified) on Tue, 03/18/2014 - 10:58am

    Well beyond a mixing of metpahors-more of a mashup, I'd say, and I confess the part about snatching purses from Russian Nobles to buy insurance (a touchy topic of late around here, that, but, soit,) has me a little confused...(I'm guessing you're referring to the economic sanctions ).

     

    Anyway, if what you're saying is that our foreign policy is idiotic and incoherent, I couldn't agree more. 

     

    It's all a side show, but the problem is that in our case the rubes like the evening to finish with some exciting fireworks displays.  Every so often some idiot blows his own dick off with a  misguided Roman Candle.


    by jollyroger on Tue, 03/18/2014 - 4:38pm

    Note to Unverified Peter: Escobar, is that you, slumming here at our little corner of blogistan?  I swear before Jesus that your above post is stylistically familiar...


    by jollyroger on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 6:46am

    McCain has now just become a mean old man. hahahahah

    In my humble opinion.

    I mean he had arisen from the dead from the worst environment created by man and then became a Senator.

    I suppose that I have agreed with him over the years on 20% of issues presented to Congress; but that means I never ever agreed with him on 80% of his decisions visa vie his voting record.

    But now he just looks like a crazy old man.

    THE SUN AINT YELLOW IT'S CHICKEN! (BD)

    The 'media' likes to discuss and present issues proving the Cold War is over?

    All these nations with nuclear bombs and the Cold War is over?

    On a whim, McCain would have taken us into a nuclear war just to prove his point!

    And the point?

    North Vietnam sucks. Commies suck. Terrorists suck. Euros who hate us suck. Anybody who is not American sucks.

    We must give more money to the Pentagon. We need to give more money to the Masters of War. We need to purchase more weapons. We need to destroy more enemy strongholds. 

    hahahahaha

    Sorry to laugh but:

    Grampa died last week and now he is buried in the rocks

    Everybody just talks about how badly they were shocked.

    But me, I expected it to happen

    I knew he lost control

    When he built a fire on Main Street

    And shot it full of holes.

    BD

    hahahahhah

    Somebody, somewhere is going to do a movie on this nutcase.

    And I will, at least, download it!


    by Richard Day on Tue, 03/18/2014 - 3:28pm

    Your grandpa's cane, it turns into a sword...and you ask why I don't live here?  Honey how come you don't move?

     

    Edit to add: OMG, look how young they are...specially Bobby and Micky...it breaks my heart...


    by jollyroger on Tue, 03/18/2014 - 4:34pm

    hahahahahhahaahahah

    That's all I got!

    hahahaha


    by Richard Day on Tue, 03/18/2014 - 5:12pm

    Would we have objected to Mexico joining the Warsaw Pact?  Now that (rump) Ukraine is unencumbered by the pro-Russian population of Crimea, the EU economic pact is back on....apparently, a subordinate clause therein commits Ukraine to military coordination with Nato.

     

    Uh-oh.


    by jollyroger on Tue, 03/18/2014 - 9:45pm

    Much BS here, sorry JR.

    Historically, Crimea is Tatar (350 years), or perhaps Greek or other - to proclaim it "historically Russian" is right up there with British Kashgar or Lahore of the Great Game - or modern day Gibraltar, for that matter. Russia had a history of stealing pieces of Finland, Japan, most of the Caucusus, the ancient Prussian city of Koenigsberg, and so on.

    The coup in Ukraine was built up over 10 years from the time of the Orange Revolution. Russsia basically inserted itself in that one to get Yanukovich back in, and he managed to toss his biggest rival, Timoshenka, into jail these last 4 years under trumped up corruption charges.

    The documents seized in the coup largely reveal the corruption inside Yanukovich's government - confirmed by other non-Ukrainian regional leaders he'd brag too about his thieving exploits. He was shameless.

    Regarding quick plebiscites on freedom - it never happens that way in the international community. Even Kosovo took years before any vote took place. (sadly Burma's for the Karin never happened). Having a vote within weeks of a military occupation is not in any way accepted under international law.

    Countries throw out unpopular leaders all the time. It might be "illegal" or unprecedented - frequently the bastard wrote the Constitution that way to affirm his power - but that doesn't give a neighbor the right to annex part or all of the territory. There are well-known internationally accepted mechanisms for solving a power vacuum.

    Considering the Russian treatment of Tatar's majority in WWII, their plaints about protecting Russians would be laughable if it weren't fucking sick. And yeah, it's similar to Russian excuses for invading Ossetia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Finland, etc. Wherever there's a Russian speaker, there's an excuse for the Great Bear to intrude.

    Hope these sanctions bite Putin in the ass big time.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 5:59am

    You appear unmoved by the most immediate sovereignty change, viz the gift by Khrushchev of the Crimea to Ukraine that is (con respetto) the topic of the post.  

     

    While you make a good case for Tatar interests, one might as well plead the case of the Seneca, who at least (I think) are allowed to sell tax free cigarettes and take wagers in upstate NY.

     

    Withal, once we venture into the question of the plebiscite, legitimacy is in the eye of the  beholder.  Query: Do you maintain that if held under, let's say, UN supervision (cf. East Timor) the result would have been operationally different, if perhaps the margin might have been less dramatic and more convincing.

     

    Bear in mind (no pun intended) that Putin has been profoundly useful to the cause of international law in resolving the impending chemical weapons brouhaha that almost had us knee deep in a new big muddy.

     

    You seem, overall, to take at face value most of the dispatches from the plucky insurgents.  I do not.

     

    That said, if I had to lay a bet on which world leader is most likely to have fomented a false flag terrorist episode as a pretext for brutally suppressing a nationalist breakaway movement, Putin would be right up there (Chechnya, eg.)   I regard him as a prick.

     

    It all pretty much sucks, which is why I continue to look towards an upward migration of the monopoly on the use of force, unlikely as that seems at present.

     

    I figure that as the shit gets more and more troublesome, even the staunch advocates of rigidly drawn nation state borders will get sick of trying to vindicate centuries old ambitions.

     

    I live in hope.


    by jollyroger on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 6:33am

    Do you maintain that if held under, let's say, UN supervision (cf. East Timor) the result would have been operationally different, if perhaps the margin might have been less dramatic and more convincing.

    I don't know about PP, but I think that if the UN had been involved, there would at least have been a "No" option on the ballot…

    That said, I think it likely that the Crimeans would still have voted to secede and join Russia if the election were held in the same time frame. However, if they were actually given more information under a free and open system, who knows?


    by Verified Atheist on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 6:40am

    I confess that the absence of a "no" option on the ballot was disappointingly clumsy...and, that said, I think it would have turned out the same way. 

     

     


    by jollyroger on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 6:56am

    So the ethnic cleansing of Tatars & Greeks in the 40's is too much history, but Kruschev's gift in the 50's is germane? 

    A little bit of Ukrainian/Soviet/Russian history:

    On September 17, 1939 the Red Army entered Polish territory, acting on the basis of a secret clause of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union andNazi Germany. Soviet Union would later deny the existence of this secret protocol, claiming that it was never allied with Nazi Germany, and acted independently to "protect" the Ukrainian and Belorusan minorities in the disintegrating Polish state.[3] Composed of mostly ethnic Ukrainian Soviet troops under the command of Marshal Semyon Timoshenko, the Soviet forces occupied Western Ukraine within 12 days, capturing the regions of Galicia and Volhynia with little Polish opposition and occupying the principal city, Lviv, on September 22 of that year.

    How did that go?

     

    The exact number of Poles deported to Siberia or Central Asia between 1939 and 1941 remains unknown, and has been estimated at from under 500,000 to over 1,500,000;[14][20] about 350,000 of whom died....
    Ultimately, between 1939 and the beginning of World War II approximately 500,000 Ukrainians would be deported to Siberia and central Asia.[14]...  On June 22, 1941 Operation Barbarossa began, and western Ukraine was captured within weeks. Prior to retreating, the Soviet authorities, unwilling to evacuate prisoners, chose to kill all inmates whether or not they had committed major or minor crimes and whether or not they were held for political reasons. Estimates of the number of people killed vary from 15,000 to 40,000

    But in every gloom, a little brightness...

    Since 1654, when the tsars began steadily to extend their control over Ukraine, Ukrainians had lived in two distinct worlds: one ruled by the Russians and the other by Poles or Austrians. As a result of the Second World War, the East/West Ukrainian dichotomy finally ceased to exist, at least on the political level. The process of amalgamation—of unification of two long-separated branches of the Ukrainian people—was not only a major aspect of the post-war period, but an event of epochal significance in the history of Ukraine.

    —Orest Subtelny, a Canadian historian of Ukrainian descent
     
    Oddly, as the Russian parts of Ukraine die off by hundreds of thousands (fertility too low to replace the dying off elders - even in Ukraine, Russian population went from 78% to 52% in a couple decades), Ukrainian majority parts are blooming. It's basically the last chance for Russia to make a power grab before they have too few people to justify.
     
    PS - don't recall where the plucky insurgents come in...

    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 8:19am

    The tatars and the greeks are not players at the present.  Ukraine and Russia are.  If we are to bring in ethnic cleansing, we'll have to give this country back to the remaining Native Americans, won't we?

     

    Edit to add: Back far enough, after all, it is Kiev that rules Moscow, not the other way round, and the whole shebang is a bunch of misdirected Vikings (the Rus)


    by jollyroger on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 10:17am

    Sorry, Stalin's ethnic cleansing was only 70 years ago, not during the time of the Rus.

    Now the Tatars make up perhaps 15% of the population, and now are being kicked off their land. Good to be Russian.

    http://en.ria.ru/world/20140319/188544777/Crimean-Tatars-Will-Have-to-Vacate-Land--Official.html


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 3:44pm

    If you are determined to respond to a different issue than I have raised, I must acknowledge my failure as an interlocutor.  Ships in  the night, and all that...


    by jollyroger on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 4:19pm

    I don't know what the different issues are - there are 3 ethnic groups in Crimea:  Tatar, Ukrainian, & Russia. Russia's atrocities against Ukrainians and Tatars were in the 20's through 40's (1920's, not 1820, thanks) - and then the remainder of that awful grey Communist period including the Russian-built Chernobyl reactor, and then Russian meddling in Ukraine since independence. Despite a treaty signed not long ago re: disposal of nukes etc, the Russians are fine with reneging on it.

    So Kruschev gave Ukraine Crimea? Probably deserve it - without the Russian sun-bathers.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 5:42pm

    I don't know what the different issues are

     

    Now we are geting somewhere.

    The Issues:

    1.Ought we, or ought we not, follow John McCain's suggestion to give military aid to rump Ukraine with an eye towards underwriting (and by extension investing our future credibility in) their struggle to maintain sovereignty over the entirety of Ukraine.(icluding Crimea).?

     

    2.  Should we stand ready to indemnify Ukraine, (to whatever extent that state emerges from a potential further amputation of such parts as are Russophile) against the loss of Russian energy exports and other current economic aid.?

     

    3. Will the eventual complexion of the rump Ukrainian government prove embarassingly tainted by anti-semitic and ultra-nationalist elements?  Will we come to regret our manifest willingness to indorse yet one more "regime change", and will we end up spending more in lives and treasure to mainain some future "credibility" of our client?

     

    4.  Can we afford, in our other geopolitical enterprises, most importantly the pacification of Syria and the maintenance of pressure on Iran (not that I endorse the latter, but it is our stated policy), to alienate Russia, and if so, is the game in Ukraine worth this candle?

     

    4. Do we think it worth the potential escalarion of these current tensions into a cold war with another nuclear superpower--these things, after all, can get out of hand.

    Please write legibly, do not copy from your neighbor's papers, and show your reasoning.  For extra credit, wrap your test paper around a nice fattie of kind bud for your professor.

     

     

     


    by jollyroger on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 7:31pm

    I think we ought not confuse the question of whether Crimea had the right to secede with the question of whether we ought to get involved.


    by Verified Atheist on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 7:36pm

    At the risk of seeming to embrace realpolitik, the "right" to secede is only discernible in retrospect--if your secession succeeds, you had the right and you won the War of Northern Aggression.  If not, you lost the Civil War


    by jollyroger on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 7:45pm

      You are embracing realpolitik and it isn't pretty. What is successful and what is moral are wildly different things.


    by Aaron Carine on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 8:36pm

    Sure. That's why I put scare quotes around "right"


    by jollyroger on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 9:09pm

    #3 is pretty ridiculous - Russian propaganda against a country that's shown rather democratic fervor and acceptance. If you have an example of how Ukraine this century is more anti-semitic than any country in the EU, out with it - otherwise it's a spurious "do you still beat your wife" question. Funny when a week after taking over Crimea, the Russians are pushing Tatars off their land.

    #4 (the first one). Yes, our grandstanding against Iran is already pretty baseless, and we've decided it's too dangerous to overthrow Syria and Syria's cooperating on WMD's (see EmptyWheel)

    #5 (the other 4)- acquiescence can also get out of hand - we let Russia take Ossetia, trample Chechnya - granted not much we could do, but pushing west towards the EU, yes - worth showing some spine against Russia combined with preference towards sensible diplomacy, but be prepared for energy retaliation or even military. Ukraine is a stable country with obvious political direction. The problems of the last decade have been precisely because of Russian reluctance to let Ukraine go. That said, 10 years ago a split of Ukraine might have made sense - doing it under the current duress is a bad precedent.

    #1 - providing weapons to an ex-Soviet state with Russia having some realistic interests and concerns (not just EU, but also Russia's security, et al) should be done with extreme caution and discretion. Jingoistic statements with weapons is a horrible idea - we saw how well it worked in Syria - not.  It might be called for (e.g. the Czech radar, or other specific defensive facilities), but shouldn't be carte blanche to load up with weapons - the issue is democracy, not the need for war.

    #2 - yes, between the US & EU (& Mideast states?) we should provide a way to soften the blow, and making the EU independent of Russian blackmail should have been high priority for the last 15 years.  Oddly enough, fracking may turn to be one way out of the trap.

     


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 03/20/2014 - 3:52am

    1.We are boycotting "5"--haven't you been following the Ezra thread?

     

    2. Where's my fattie?

     

    3. After we deal with the issues raised in "2", above, we will be appropriately equipped to address the others...


    by jollyroger on Thu, 03/20/2014 - 8:52am

    Permit me to direct your attention to the apparently unexamined acceptance (as a major premise) of our prerogative to "permit" this or that  behavior vis a vis Ukraine, Ossetia, etc.

     

    Do you then endorse the projection, willy nilly, of American economic and/or military power and/or hegemony?

     

    If so, why?


    by jollyroger on Thu, 03/20/2014 - 5:59pm

       Demonstrating our displeasure at unlawful behavior doesn't equal "American hegemony".  It is usually a good thing when countries stand up for international  norms, and there are ways to do it without waging war. Economic power brought good results when it was used  against South Africa and perhaps when it was used against Iran.


    by Aaron Carine on Thu, 03/20/2014 - 7:01pm

    The pressure on South Africa was largely non-governmental and it was only distilled into the act (vetoed by Reagan) after boycott divest and sanction movements had become widely spread.

     

    That said, it would be hard to equate anything done thus far by Russia to the kind of internal oppression represented by apartheid.

     

    As to the benign nature of economic sanctions, bear in mind the origin of the Pearl Harbor attack

    These things don't stay simply economic. Moreover, the pressure on Obama to militarize our intervention represents a dangerous manifestation of your basic premise that one ought to exhibit "disapproval", blah blah. One ought not foment coups.

    by jollyroger on Thu, 03/20/2014 - 7:33pm

       I'm not sure what your point is in saying that the U.S. imposed sanctions after the demand for sanctions became widespread. Sanctions weren't going to be imposed before people where demanding them. If your second sentence means that Russia shouldn't have sanctions imposed on them because they don't have apartheid, that doesn't seem reasonable. Nothing besides apartheid merits sanctions?

      In your third sentence, it sounds like your blaming America for Japan's aggression, which is similar to the excuses you are making for Russia's belligerence; Crimea used to be Russian, they held a vote(a sham vote) after invading, blah, blah.

      However, I will agree that sanctions are more questionable if they are part of an escalation toward military action. In most cases, sanctions are meant as an alternative to violence.


    by Aaron Carine on Fri, 03/21/2014 - 8:28am

    if by "meant" you mean "intended", then perhaps , yes.  

     

    That said (and what I meant to implicate by the reference to Japan) economic sanctions, just because they don't involve physical violence, can be both lethal (as in the Iraq sanctions which are blamed for the death of half a million children) and fundamentally so transgressive of a nation's vital interests as to be a legitimate (whatever the fuck THAT means) cassus belli.


    by jollyroger on Fri, 03/21/2014 - 8:54am

       Yeah, but sanctions on Russia won't be lethal.(this may be nitpicking, but UNICEF said that Iraq's increased child mortality wasn't solely due to sanctions; http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm).

      Sanctions aren't considered a legitimate casus belli by the United Nations Charter or the earlier League of Nations Charter.  It would be especially lame for Japan to say "we had to engage in aggression because of the sanctions imposed on us due to our previous aggression in China".


    by Aaron Carine on Fri, 03/21/2014 - 9:15am

      By the way, the lecture you linked to is bullshit. This  guy is blaming the Allies for World War II; making the aggressors into the victims. That he cites Barnes, a discredited crank and Holocaust denier, is one reason that it is bullshit.


    by Aaron Carine on Fri, 03/21/2014 - 9:20am

    Given that it came from the Mises Institute, I'm hardly surprised.


    by Verified Atheist on Fri, 03/21/2014 - 9:25am

    burned by the algorithm...Evil Eric, Evil!


    by jollyroger on Fri, 03/21/2014 - 10:11am

    Yeah, there have been times when I've been searching for something and I find a link that seems to back up what I'm saying, but when I keep reading…

    On more than one occasion it's bitten me.


    by Verified Atheist on Fri, 03/21/2014 - 10:40am

    Well, of course, had I bothered actually to read the article, I might have been saved the embarrasment...that said, I happen to know independently that the Japanese felt severely squeezed, and FDR was under no illusions as to the probable outcome of his sanctions...Not that there was anything wrong with that...


    by jollyroger on Fri, 03/21/2014 - 10:54am

    I, for one, like your kamikaze, throw-all-caution-to-the-wind approach to posting, Jolly. For one thing, it makes our job much easier-:)


    by Peter Schwartz on Fri, 03/21/2014 - 12:01pm

    Spontaneous me...


    by jollyroger on Fri, 03/21/2014 - 1:08pm

     Me too, so I can't judge JR that harshly. Although perhaps we should all be ashamed. I got a statement out of a book and was informed that a few pages later there was another statement that contradicted it. I was guilty of laziness, but I think the author shouldn't have been contradicting himself like that.


    by Aaron Carine on Fri, 03/21/2014 - 4:42pm

    That Russians are pushing Tartar sauce?

    Fiendish bastards.


    by Qnonymous (not verified) on Thu, 03/20/2014 - 8:03pm

    While codpiece wearing ex presidents flounder...(ta-dum)  Thank you, I'll be here all year...


    by jollyroger on Thu, 03/20/2014 - 8:08pm

    worth showing some spine against Russia

     

    One word: Stalingrad


    by jollyroger on Fri, 03/21/2014 - 4:58am

    If you have an example of how Ukraine this century is more anti-semitic than any country in the EU, out with it 

    Wolfsangel, symbol of Svoboda (look familiar?)

    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/03/18/yes_there_are_bad_guys_...

     

    h/t Pepe Escobar, whom I continue to (suspect is unverified Peter...)


    by jollyroger on Fri, 03/21/2014 - 9:33am

    "Wherever there's a Russian speaker, there's an excuse for the Great Bear to intrude."

    Ruh-roh

    Native Americans and Russians share the same language | Mail Online

     


    by EmmaZahn on Thu, 03/20/2014 - 9:06pm

    Looks like Crazy Horse to me...

     

    edit to add:Crazy Horse= Czar Horsey!  We may be onto something here--call Glenn Beck!


    by jollyroger on Thu, 03/20/2014 - 9:40pm