Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Ukraine blowing up

Riots in Kiev have become violent. Department of Homeland Security must be watching this very closely.


















Read about it here.

6 comments:

Ralph Musgrave said...

There is a Russian TV program in the UK which I often watch. It's no more biased than our own BBC. And the Russian station often asks US police chiefs saying what they'd do when faced with Kiev rioters throwing petrol bombs. The US police normally say something like: use lethal force in return.

Obviously that's designed to make us feel sympathetic for the authorities in Kiev. But interesting, all the same.

mike norman said...

There is no doubt in my mind they would use lethal force here in the U.S. I saw them use near-lethal force against peaceful protesters during Occupy Wall Street. (Smashings heads with bats.)

Homeland Security is said to have purchased 1.5 BILLION rounds of ammo and 140,000 rounds of sniper bullets.

Tom Hickey said...

Looks like civil war developing in Ukraine. This is a proxy war between the US and Russia - Obama v. Putin.

mike norman said...

It's also a laboratory for DHS.

Critical Tinkerer said...

What is weird is ukraine analysys by Emmanuel Wallerstain where he writes the conflict as USA /EU conflict not EU /Russia as everyone think.

http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/commentaries/

Otherwise almost impecable Wallerstain here is going against conventional narrative. This is puzzling but also possible that Russia is completly under USA influence and EU as an absolut neoliberal paradise fighting for influence over Ukraine.

Even long term predictions of Wallerstain proved correct, but this blows my mind.

Tom Hickey said...

Interesting analysis but unconvincing to me.

However, I think that if NATO would break down there is a good chance that Russia could join Europe in a way that the UK is part of the EU but not the EZ. Russia Needs Europe and Europe needs Russia a lot more than either needs the US. Russia has the resources and Europe has the markets. NATO is now a military anachronism other than as the bastion of neoliberalism, neo-imperialism and neocolonialism. But Russia is no longer a serious threat until it is deliberately provoked, which the US is fixed on continuing to do.

I don't see his reasoning for a US-China alliance either. The US is tightly allied with China's traditional enemies, Japan and Korea. The Korean War was a proxy war between the US and China, which MacArthur wanted to turn it into a real war. That proxy war is still going on since NK cannot continue to exist under the present configuration without China's support.

Conversely, Vietnam was a war of national liberation in my view. The US is much more a natural ally of Vietnam than China, from whom Vietnam has always had to guard its independence against.