The Death and Resurrection of a Blogger
By Dmitry Orlov / Club Orlov
• Cultural collapse has resulted from a pseudo-nationalist effort to deny Ukraine’s Russian heritage and to replace it with a cult of adulation of all things Western and a made-up national language and culture synthesized out of some village dialects and a deep-seated sense of historical grievance.
• Social collapse came from the marginalization and ostracism of a large part of the population that associated itself more closely with Russia than with nativist Ukrainian pseudo-nationalism. A lot of these people moved there after the Revolution, to exert a civilizing influence on a backward, agrarian region. Many of their descendants have now moved back to Russia.
• Political collapse started with the foreign-directed violent overthrow of the constitutional government and its replacement with some compliant stooges hand-picked by the US State Department. In its second phase, bad politics provoked a civil war that is going on to this day, and a dismembering of the country, with Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea going their separate ways. Somewhere along the way the Ukrainian parliament was restocked with oligarchs and criminals of every stripe, making the country’s politics so corrupt as to make it ungovernable even for its mighty CIA handlers.
• Commercial collapse was readily produced by severing many of the economic ties between the Ukraine and Russia. In particular, this largely destroyed the entire advanced industrial sector of the Ukrainian economy (which was once the pride of the USSR) and caused many of the technical specialists to exfiltrate to other, more productive locales—such as North Korea, which was in need of some rocket scientists and atomic weapons experts. All of the major high tech sectors—rocket engines, large ship engines, helicopter engines, etc.—have relocated to Russia. Russia remains the Ukraine’s largest trading partner, but this only shows that its attempted reorientation toward the West has been a failure. The Ukraine does still manage to export to the West such items as logs (it is clearcutting what’s left of its forests) and dirt (stripping off its topsoil using bulldozers and bucket loaders and shipping it out).
But then poor Babchenko gets shot, three times in the back, just like poor Boris Nemtsov. He was feeling ill, and so he went to the corner to buy some bread (I know, but that’s the official story) and he got shot in the back either on the way there or on the way back (versions vary) right in front of his apartment (where his wife was at home). Below is a picture of him dead. As numerous astute observers of wounded and corpses quickly pointed out, he is conscious (judging from pose and muscle tone), his respiratory and circulatory systems are in good shape (his bald pate is nice and pink) and there is far too much bleeding from the entry wounds. As a crisis actor, Babchenko is unconvincing. Never mind that, he died, either right there and then, or in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, or in the hospital (versions vary). [dropcap]U[/dropcap]pon news of poor Babchenko’s untimely demise, the entire Russian floccinaucinihilipilificationist community flew into high dudgeon over what was clearly (no investigation or evidence needed) a political assassination ordered by the highest echelons of the criminal Russian regime, perhaps by Putin personally. Red carnations piled up in front of Babchenko’s apartment building. People in Moscow started booking flights to Kiev to attend the fallen hero’s funeral. At the UN in New York, the Russian-born Ukrainian representative Pavel (self-styled “Pavlo”) Klimkin said this: “Arkady Babchenko, a Russian journalist and well-known opponent of the Russian regime, was killed near his apartment in [Kiev]. Before he arrived in [the] Ukraine, he was forced to leave Russia after attacks and threats against him and his family… [He] continued to fight for a democratic Russia from [the] Ukraine, so, of course, Moscow has always viewed him as an enemy… It’s too early to say who is behind it, but the analysis of similar cases gives us reasonable grounds to believe that Russia is using other types of tactics to destabilize the situation in Ukraine. In particular, there are terrorist attacks, subversive activities and political murders.” Several other Ukrainian worthies weighed in as well. This, please note, is now standard procedure: something happens, and before an investigation even starts and any facts are ascertained a snap decision is made to Blame Russia. This has by now happened so many times as to make it routine: the shoot-down of the Malaysian Boeing over Eastern Ukraine, the killing of Boris Nemtsov, the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, etc. Some people started saying that it’s now high time to expel some more Russian diplomats and introduce some more anti-Russian sanctions. Everything was going perfectly well. But then Babchenko turns up very much alive at a press conference. There is an audible gasp. Babchenko, flanked by Ukrainian officials, looks rather shamefaced, and so do they. It is then announced that his murder was staged, but that there really was a contract taken out on him, and that this was all done in order to apprehend the culprits, who had already paid the advance, when they pay the rest of the contract. And the culprits are, of course, Russian officials. All the Russian floccinaucinihilipilificationists, everywhere in the world, instantaneously felt very much cheated by this spectacle of their favorite blogger rising from the dead, and were outraged. The piles of carnations cost money, as did the airline tickets from Moscow to Kiev to attend his funeral. The fact that lots of people were rolling around on the floor laughing didn’t make them feel any better. And most people were laughing, or at least smiling. You see, most people in the world are what you might call “normies”: they don’t like constructed realities, and they aren’t capable of distinguishing a skillfully arranged political hoax from just some damned lies. While everyone was laughing their heads off, the Russian floccinaucinihilipilificationist community, along with much of the Western media, was loudly condemning this breach of good manners, journalistic ethics, competent governance and whatever else they could think of condemning. It was beautiful! An obvious question arose in numerous heads at once: who knew of the hoax, and when did they know it. The Ukrainian perma-drunk president Poroshenko definitely knew all along, and the silly dunce Klimkin obviously didn’t. But did Babchenko’s own wife know? She was present at the scene while Babchenko laid on the floor and waited for the makeup artist to arrange the pig’s blood and paint the bullet holes on his back. And then she spent a day grieving publicly and accepting condolences. By now it is very difficult to establish who knew when, although it is sometimes quite obvious who lied about it. But what of the reason for this hoax? A certain person was immediately arrested: a middle-aged pudgy balding gentleman who is the top manager of a German-Ukrainian company that is the only private company that supplies weapons to the Ukrainian military. He was interrogated, and divulged several nonsensical details. The chief assassin was to be a certain Ukrainian warrior priest who fought “Russian separatists” in the east and hates Russia. And his contact within Russia was some individual whose existence is yet to be established. A likely story for a Kremlin assassination plot, no? A more reasonable explanation is that this was part of an effort to get the balding middle-aged manager to give up his share of the arms company—a corporate raid, in essence. Blaming Russia is always job one, of course, but why not kill two birds with one stone? That’s how they do things in the Ukraine. The facts that the "Kremlin’s paid assassin" was to be some warrior monk of Shaolin who happens to hate Russia, and that the Russian contact doesn’t quite exist—those are just some pesky details to sweep under the rug while everyone is looking away. A lot of Ukrainian officials are now scratching their heads; what did they do wrong? They faithfully followed the same playbook as the British did with the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter. They were "killed" using a nerve agent designed to kill thousands within seconds, but survived. Russia was accused based on no evidence, and the accusation stuck to the extent that lots of countries expelled some Russian diplomats. And now that the entire official version of the Skripal affair is starting to look like a simple politically motivated kidnapping, the media is suddenly mum about it. The Brits don’t seem particularly embarrassed by all this, and there aren’t millions of people laughing at this folly. Well, Theresa May does seem permanently embarrassed, and she is indeed an embarrassment, but the Skripal mission was something like a success. At least it didn’t rise to the level of ridicule of the Babchenko affair. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what collapse looks like up close and personal. A journalist who dies and is resurrected as a non-journalist. A country’s political establishment becomes the laughingstock of the planet. Who will believe them now? And an entire juggernaut of anti-Russian provocations based on evidence-free accusations is in danger of being derailed by the “Babchenko Effect.” Arkady, you Russian patriot, let me buy you a beer! Although it is generally a good idea not to ascribe sinister intent to actions for which mere stupidity suffices, in this case there may be a hidden motive. The official story is that the pudgy manager and his warrior priest were targeting up to 30 individuals. Couple this with the fact that Poroshenko is doing dismally in the ratings, and is likely to do equally badly at the polls during the upcoming election. Perhaps the real targets of the Babchenko effect are other journalists working in the Ukraine. At any time now, should they displease Poroshenko, they may find themselves lying prone in a pool of blood with three bullet holes in the back, and this time it won't be just a warning and their death may turn out to be quite real. This prospect brings us face to face with the real task of surviving collapse: not dying.
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We agree with "slo mo"——...see if you agree
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Things to ponder
While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.
Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
Peter VE said...
Putin doesn't need secret agents when the West puts in its stooges: they have decisively demonstrated how to ruin a country by following the siren call of Westernization.
Veronica said...
Slo Mo said...