Dmitry Orlov's Blog, page 13

My interview on the Pete Santilli Show

My interview starts one hour into the segment.

Book Announcement: Communities that Abide

Over the past few months I've been living in a place that agrees with me in a lot of ways. I like the fact that pets and children here roam free. The dogs roam about in playful packs, and temporarily attach themselves to humans they like. The cats stand their ground against dogs, and bring presents of dead animals to humans they like. There are even some wild horses that graze in the jungle during the day and go to the beach in the evenings, to be petted by tourists. The children quickly develop an ecosystem of their own, and look out for each other, with random adults providing whatever parenting might be required from time to time. Indoor cats, dogs on leashes and “helicopter” parenting are unheard of here. I also like how schedules here are for buses, while people do what they like when they like, depending on the general mood and the weather (which fluctuates between pretty nice and extremely nice). Having such great neighbors does a good deal to heal one's soul.
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Ukrainians on the verge of a nervous breakdown

In this intercepted phone call Yulia Tymoshenko, a likely Ukrainian presidential candidate (but there will be no elections*) talks about using nuclear weapons on the eight million Russian citizens who live in Ukraine. Good thing these "Ukrainians" don't have any nuclear weapons, but they do have plentiful baseball bats and AK47s looted from armories in the west of the country. Listening to the tone of her voice (these Ukrainian nationalists are speaking together in pretty good Russian, by the way; they are both urbane and Ukrainian is a village dialect) I almost feel sorry for her. Except that she is talking about murdering people like me (my father was born in Kiev, so I have the right to a Ukrainian citizenship). Ahem, President Putin, do you have a moment?

[* And the reason there will be no election is that if the election were held today, the people in power would get maybe 5% of the popular vote.]

In his novel The White Guard, Mikhail Bulgakov, writing of the events of 1918 in Ukraine, characterized Ukrainian politics as a “pathetic operetta.” We appear to be at just that point yet again.



In other news, the ever-amusing Russian Liberal Democrat leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky has proposed dividing up Western Ukraine between Poland, Hungary and Romania. Poland quickly responded that it has no interest in annexing former Eastern Poland. I can't blame them.

Video interview on USAWatchdog

[Thanks to Greg for making this possible and to Banana Azul for letting me use their splendid tiki hut.] Collapse and Systemic Failure at All Levels Coming to U.S. (But we spend the bulk of the time talking about Ukraine, of course.)

The Madness of President Putin

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[Many thanks to Max who helped put this together.]

Of all the various interpretations Western leaders and commentators have offered for why the president of the Russian Federation has responded the way he has to the events in Ukraine over the course of February and March of 2014—in refusing to acquiesce to the installation of a neo-fascist regime in Kiev, and in upholding the right of Crimea to self-determination—the most striking and illuminating interpretation is that he has gone mad. Striking and illuminating, that is, something in the West itself.
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Project Unspell First Quarterly Update

It's been three months since the fundraiser and the project is moving along nicely. Details are available here.

Is anyone really in control in Ukraine?

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[While everyone is concentrating on the referendum in Crimea, let's not lose sight of what's happening in the rest of (formerly independent) Ukraine. As we already know, the government in Kiev is dead broke; the aid that is forthcoming from the US is barely enough to cover its debt to Russia's Gazprom, for natural gas. Ukraine's bond yield has spiked to 50% while $15 billion of these bondsmature and haveto be rolled over this year.

A lot has been made of the Russian and Belarussian troops massing all around Ukraine and in Crimea, but so far little has been heard of the state of the military within Ukraine itself. But now it appears that Ukraine's military (which has never been involved in any armed conflict anywhere and is poorly trained and poorly armed) is mostly on the Russian side already, and, in any case, not willing to follow orders from Kiev. It also appears that the National Guard goon squads being hastily organized by the government in Kiev may be effective at intimidating civilians, but that they won't be much of a military force.

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Picture of the day

The Crimean “Crisis” and Western Bias

[Tuesday update:

The guest post from Renée last week appeared on this blog because Huffington Post refused to run it. And now I hear that no comment linking the new Ukrainian government to the neo-Nazis or the neo-Nazis to the mass murder in Kiev can get through on any news site. It seems like there is an actual news blackout on this message:

"It appears that the US State Dept. gave $5 billion to Ukrainian neo-Nazis who used some of the money to hire mass murderers who massacred protesters, policemen and bystanders in order to provide a rationale for overthrowing the democratically elected government of Ukraine and installing an anti-Russian puppet government."

That's about as short and sweet as I can make it. Please go and see how many places you can cut and paste that sentence. It would give us an idea of the extent of the censorship in the US. First they take over Ukraine, then Huffington Post, what's next? Your living-room?]

[Ukraine update:

Everybody now admits that the Kiev massacre was a false flag operation, just like I said it was. The leading theory is that the snipers who fired indiscriminately on policemen, demonstrators and bystanders were hired by the Ukrainian opposition. (Interesting question: Were they paid with US State Dept. funds?) But in response the newly installed authorities in Kiev have gone full-retard and are blaming... why, Russia, of course! So obvious! Russia had just signed a historic deal with Yanukovych, accepting Ukraine into the Customs Union and giving it a huge discount on natural gas, plus the Winter Olympics in Sochi were underway. Of course Russia would want to throw all of that away, watch helplessly as Ukraine's government gets overthrown and replaced by US-financed neo-Nazis, and now face sanctions for defending the rights of its citizens in Crimea. No, not really.

Meanwhile, Putin is having trouble explaining to Western leaders that Russia is not doing anything illegal: Russian troops are in Crimea legally, based on a long-term agreement with Ukraine and the self-defense forces in charge there are irregulars who do not report to the Russian military. Crimea is about to hold a referendum on independence from Ukraine (having ended up as part of Ukraine as an accident) but the West says the referendum is illegal. You see, unlike the Albanians in Kosovo or the South Sudanese or just about any other group, the Russians in Crimea do not have the right of self-determination. Why? Because they are Russian?

This week's guest post is by Outlook Zen. It strikes me as exceptionally balanced; the one quibble I have is against mentioning Godwin’s Law while ignoring this. Goodwin rightly called out people who use the terms “fascism” and “Nazi” and gratuitously compare people to Hitler. But what about those who don jackboots and Swastika armbands and stomp around saluting each other with the Hitlergruß? Is the comparison still gratuitous? There seems to be a taboo in the US against mentioning that there were neo-Nazis behind the putsch in Kiev. The allegations that they hired snipers to shoot other protesters, to produce a rationale for overthrowing the government, are being hushed up too. Too embarrassing? Well, it should be! But there should still be a full investigation.]

Just two weeks ago, we had discussed the bias in international reporting, and the tendency of media outlets to report the most sensational facts without providing proper context and a full-view of the situation. How time appropriate, given the outbreak of the Russia-Crimea situation in the past few days. As we hear the reporting of the situation in US and western media, I’m reminded over and over again of my earlier complaints. So many of the articles seem so sensational and biased in their reporting. What stands out glaringly is the extent to which Russia has been condemned. Over the past days, I’ve seen Putin compared to Hitler, Russia compared to Nazi Germany, and the Crimean annexation compared to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. The same media that has always jumped to condemn Bush-Hitler comparisons, is now the first to invoke Godwin’s Law when describing Russia and Putin.Read more »

Keiser Report Episode 571

I appear in the second half of the interview, talking mostly about the situation in Ukraine.