Rewriting the Orange Revolution of 2004.

As Ukraine approaches its first presidential election since the Orange revolution in 2004, disappointment runs deep. A recent survey shows that 75% of Ukrainians believe the leaders of the street protests, which overturned a rigged ballot and catapulted Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency, used it for their own ends and betrayed their supporters.

That is because Ukrainian voters as opposed to propagandists like James Marson realise that the idea of 'betrayal' is true. That was apparent no sooner had neoliberal oligarchs like Petro Poroshenko been dismissed by Yushchenko for corruption and rivalry in September 2005, less than a year after the Orange Revolution.

However, in accordance with the circulation of these Machievellian elites, Poroshenko was promoted back in October 2009 by Yushchenko as Foreign Minister, proving that no matter what an oligarch does his money and media power ensures he must be kept onside when elections loom.

Poroshenko is is considered one of the country's wealthiest figures and owns 5 Kanal, a pro-Yushchenko news station and has controlling shares in the Roshen group, the country's largest sweets company. Curiously his position was voted for by Yushchenko's bitter rival-Yulia Tymoshenko.

One dominant interpretation of the "failure" of the Orange revolution is as the failure of the west. This view can be traced back to the erroneous idea (propagated by Russia) that the Orange revolution was actually created by the west. In this interpretation, Ukraine became "free" in 2004 from the Russian yoke – the west "won".

Well, no the West did not 'create it' but it certainly exploited Ukrainian discontent with Kuchma's corrupt regime to foist a multi-media event designer 'revolution' modelled on Otpor in Serbia and the carefully choreographed coup in Georgia which was branded the Rose Revolution in late 2003.

Its curious that Marson, a ceaseless propagandist for NATO expansion and Yushchenko now tries to reframe the Orange Revolution in a way that makes it seem as though the hopes invested in it were not triumphalistic nor that this reflected the massive inflow of cash from Western NGOS.

This crude narrative of a fairytale People Power uprising was not put forth by Russia but by journalists like Askold Krushelnycky whose absurd An Orange Revolution: A Personal Journey Through Ukrainian History is a monument to the kitsch in Maidan Nezalezhnosti Square in 2004.

It is true the Ukranians have lost out, not least because the West's favourite clients pursued neoliberal policies that would favour short term investment without cleaning up politics first. For corruption is not considered important so long as it does not affect the return on those investments.

The Ukrainian people acted simply as extras in a film set with the script drafted by Western funded NGOS whose plot was to fast track Ukraine into NATO. Which is why Radek Sikorski, the neoconservative Polish FM who worked with Yushchenko's wife in the US New Atlantic Initiative think tank.

That makes a mockery of Marsons assertion that,

The subsequent failure of Ukraine to join Nato, make significant progress on European Union membership or develop European-style institutions and leadership, led one commentator, Simon Tisdall, to declare that, five years on, "in a sense, [Russian prime minister Vladimir] Putin has won".

It would be difficult to see how Putin had 'lost'. Then again, Marson has himself asserted in the same article that the idea that the West 'won' in 2004 was Russian propaganda. So the failure of a policy that was backed by Miliband and Sikorski is presumably now a Russian invention. How curious.

When facts fail to fit the prescriptions of the propaganda screed, the rule has been to re-invent the reality

But the Orange revolution was not primarily about defining Ukraine's future as with the west or with Russia, about leaving Russia's sphere of influence, and joining the west's (again, how Russia interpreted it).

It was about defining Ukraine's aspirations and values as western (free and fair elections, rule of law, a balanced media, limited corruption, diversified market economy) as opposed to Russian (rigged elections, legal anarchy, controlled media, rampant corruption, crony state capitalism).

Marson is clearly on the defensive when he produces a list of abstract words that could come from a 1001 'democracy transition' texts churned out by mediocre academician PhD students. The kind who then go on to prostitute themselves in think tanks where the idea of thinking independently outside the box is anathema.

Orwell knew that when writers fly off into abstraction it denotes an indifference to reality.

That becomes quite clear with the idea that the West supports a "balanced media" when, in fact, Yushchenko allows Radio Liberty and Voice of America airtime but bans Russian stations which are popular with Russophones in Eastern Ukraine as well as Ukrainian speakers .

Yushchenko's censorship increased as his 'reforms' acheived nothing and, as his popularity slumped, he tried to cut off Russian speaking programmes, ramp up Ukrainian ethnocentrism and import those Russian journalists who supported media oligarchs like Berezovsky to boost his image as Yeltsin once did.

As RT reported in 2008,
"Dozens of Ukrainian students have come to Moscow to watch a Russian-directed movie called ‘Wanted’. They’ve travelled to the capital in protest at a Ukrainian law that bans films in Russian in Ukraine"
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Polish Neoconservatives in the "Blogosphere".

That tropes about a 'New Cold War' can become part of a one dimensional a rigid mindset with regards Russia is quite evident when looking at the number of journalists who see Russia as some menacing and inherently sinister Neo-Soviet threat.

Even in the humble blogosphere this has come across whenever Russia is mentioned in newsites reporting on its relations with Poland and one called Polskie Radio Zla Granicy attracts its fair share of Polish emigres or Poles who use English well to rant about Russia.

The following dialogue is typical and involves myself and two Poles who took an press release about Medvedev's prevention of a Russian 'dissident', Alexander Podrabinek, being rewarded by the Polish state with an Order of Merit for his human rights work.

The Chancellery of the President of Poland explained that some countries, including Belarus, Russia, Great Britain, France, Italy and Canada, require consent from their authorities if another state wants to award their citizens.

Therefore, the Chancellery asked the Foreign Ministry to get agreement from the Russia’s president.

Which then led to these comments which are interesting because though misinformed and fanatical are the result of the constant portrayal of Russia as some sinister and demonic Moloch State forever ready to grind freedom to dust under its iron grip

27.11.2009 15:03

Is it any surprise that Russia does not want anyone who has had anything to do to with the promotion of greater democracy, freedom and liberty to be given an award. In the not to distant past such people were rewarded with a trip to the Gulags.
The present Putin regime would like nothing more then a return to these good old days.

Roman

I ditto Roman's comment, just like to add, this should go even beyond Russia. This agreement should be terminated with all countries.

Maciej Skiba

Here I thought I'd interupt this cordial affirmation of visceral contempt for Russia by pointing out the following and the rest of the discussion ensued,

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Russia is not the Soviet Union. Putin is not Neo-Stalinist. Stalin was Georgian and the Soviet Union was a multinational Empire. Conflating Russia with the Soviet Union is sometimes done by hard right nationalists posing as lovers of democracy.

Just because revanchist Poles like Roman & Skiba are itching for a ratcheting up of conflict with Russia and to advance Poland as the dominant force in Central Eastern Europe does not mean this crude propaganda be taken seriously.

Karl

Nobody is ratcheting up conflict, were just stating facts. Russia's democracy is a sham, Russia uses gas as a political weapon (Russia wants to monopolize EU's supplies), Russia is undermining western efforts on Iran, to put it simply we have to admit that Russia's and the West's interest don't converge.

What's good for Russia (or at least in the Russian mindset) is bad for the EU, and whats good for the EU in Russian mindset is bad for Russia.

Maciej Skiba.

Karl,

The Nationalism of Russia today and the Stalinism of the previous Soviet Union are simply flip sides of the same coin. Just because you say they are different, doesn’t mean that they truly are. Sure they differ in name, and they may show the world a different veneer, however their essence is the same.

Granted, the current regime has not yet descended to the same depths of depravity that the Soviet Union had, however given enough time and the right circumstances, it would not be difficult to imagine such a thing happening.

As far as I’m concerned actions speak louder then words.

Putin's Russia has been engaging in just the sort of activities that the former Soviet Union was famous for.

Allow me to cite just a few examples:

- Revising history to suit their agenda (Reviving Stalin as a hero and a glossing over of his crimes, idolizing the NKVD/KGB, downplaying the Soviet Union’s role in starting WW2 and instead apportioning blame to the victims)

- Resorting to extreme measures to silence both internal and external critics (poisonings of Yuschenko and Litvinenko, the murder of countless free thinking Russian journalists)

- Concentrating control of media, communications, and economic resources in the hands of Putin and his cronies thereby ensuring that there can be no effective political opposition.

- Building a cult of personality around Putin. Essentially replacing Stalinism by something like “Putinism”.

- Use of both military and economic levers to exert pressure on weaker states in order that Russia may bend them to their will. (Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, etc..).

The last thing Poles want is a conflict with Russia.

However this does not mean that we should simply keep our heads in the sand and allow ourselves to be bullied by a resurgent Russia.

Maciej,
As usual your logic is impeccable.

Roman.

28.11.2009 02:59

While it is true that today's Russia and the USSR are not one and the same, it was the RFSSR that dominated the USSR even if the leaders were not Russians.

Russia has traditionally had an "iron fist in the iron glove" approach to diplomacy. The invasion of Georgia on such miniscule pretext is merely example of the long-standing Russian view that Russia has the strength, therefore the right, to do anything she wants in her sphere of influence.

Britain has had that view in the past. It is common among states that have been powerful for a very long time. It is particularly dangerous in 2 situations: a) when there is no balancing power and b) when real power is weakening. In the first it is because no-one can stand up effectively. In the second because that power needs to restore itself to it's previous (rightful?) position.

Any guesses where Russia fits in here?

Leszek

28.11.2009 07:32

One way of countering the repetitive and one dimensional Polish neoconservative creed here is to invite comparisons.

Those who think Georgia is some beacon of liberty and an outpost of freedom compared with Russia are as deluded as those who believed Soviet Communism in the 30s was a promising humanist experiment.

The aggression in Georgia was started by Saakasahvili who rained down death and destruction on Tskhanvili in August 2008 using grad rockets. This is a documented fact.

It is accepted by the EU report and HRW, whilst critical of Russia, also has criticised Georgia for war crimes. Saakashvili started the war to shore up his crumbling domestic support base.

Not that he ever had much support anyway. The Rose Revolution of 2003 was a carefully choreographed designer revolution funded primarily by the USA which gave Saakashvili a staggering 96% of the vote.

Saakashvili's regime in Tblisi is worse than Putin's. Targetted assassins of opponents, mass corruption, rigged elections, the itimidation of ethnic monorities and far right nationalism are routine features.

As well as censorship, closing down critical media ( heard of Imedi TV have we ? ) and the police using live ammunition on protesters as in November 2007. The police trained and equipped partly by NGOS like Soros's Open Society Foundation.

The idea that only Russia wants some 'sphere of influence' is more Orwellian doublethink.

Georgia is a US vassal state where millions of dollars have been used to promote Saakashvili because it is a pipeline protectorate.

The BTC pipeline is an essential reason for the West including Georgia in its sphere of influence and oil has been the major factor in the Wests interest in carving out a chain of clients in ex-Soviet space.

The idea that Russia is involved in some New Cold War, as proposed by Edward Lucas, is a complete distortion: its the USA primarily that is advancing its power aggressively in a bid for global hegemony.

By contrast Russia is reacting to the West and to the USA which also uses oil and gas as a strategic lever: only they have launched illegal wars of aggression like the one in Iraq to acheive that.

By comparison the number of people killed by the Russian incursion into Georgia is minimal compared to the figure of over one million Iraqis who have died as a result of Bush's war.

One championed by neoconservatives such as Radek Sikorski who is a member of the American Enterprise Institute ( members inc Perle, Wolfowitz etc ) and who like most leading Polish stateman supports the aggressive expansion of US power into Eurasia.

Poland's shame in supporting Iraq, its transformation from a Soviet satellite into a US one, is in continuity with the politics of being a willing model pupil of larger Imperial states.

The fact that Poland has been an uncritical and unconditional vassal state of the USA is not even popular with the majority of Poles, one reason for the continuous attempt to bait Russia.

After all, it is the assumption of Polands elite that only by playing on exaggerated fears of Russia in 'public diplomacy' can the sheep be moved into supporting an expansionist role for NATO in Ukraine & Georgia.

In which Poland would become somewhat like Israel, a frontline military democracy in the crusade for US global hegemony and control over the 'World Island' of Eurasia.

Karl Naylor

28.11.2009 17:24

Karl,

Nobody thinks Georgia is a beacon of liberty and freedom, if you can quote somebody that said it on here I would love to see it. I could get into your whole discussion of Georgia but seeing as nobody claimed it is some beacon of light, there is no point discussing it. In the end both Georgia's and Russia's democracy is a joke. This does not mean however we should allow Russia to bully Georgia around.

Iraq was a war for oil? I didn't realize people still repeat this asinine belief. I suggest you look up who has received the most oil contracts in Iraq, China has become the main beneficiary and the other countries don't even come close. But I am all ears for you to convince me how Bush went to war so China can get oil.

Now granted some of the reasons of entering Iraq weren't as noble, but some where, their was dozens of reasons we entered Iraq and not just one.

Your right over 1 million Iraqis died, but most of the deaths are a result of jihadists and sectarian fighting than a result of US troops. Let the blame lie with those that are doing the actual killing, instead of indirectly connecting the dots in the process absolving these murderers.

Radek Sikorski in largely responsible for the improvement of ties between Poland and Russia, I would hardly consider him aggressive, he is as diplomatic as he can be without being naive at the same time.

What do you want him to do, sit like a good boy and not mention that the EU is overly dependent on Russian gas supplies (supplies Russia has used as a political weapon), any action that Sikorski takes concerning Russia, is in defense of Russian bullying.

You meant to say ally not vassal, if you don't know the difference look it up in the dictionary. On many occasions has Poland been critical of the US, but we realize as long as the EU can't find its balls, we have no choice but to stick close to America.

Maciej Skiba

" This does not mean however we should allow Russia to bully Georgia around".

Russia made its position on Georgia clear a number of times: that if it attacked South Ossetia, Russia would respond with the force proportional to repel it which is what Russia did.

Georgia was praised as a beacon by people like, duh, the previous President of the USA George Bush who addressed a crowd in Tblisi with this,

“You are making many important contributions to freedom’s cause, but your most important contribution is your example. Hopeful changes are taking places from Baghdad to Beirut and Bishkek. But before there was a Purple Revolution in Iraq or Orange Revolution in Ukraine or a Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, there was a Rose Revolution in Georgia,”

“Your courage is inspiring democratic reformers and sending a message across the world – freedom will be a future of each nation and every people on earth”

http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=9838

So the fact that Georgia was being boosted as an aggressive protectorate of US oil interests had an obvious impact on Saakashvili's decision to launch a war of aggression against Russia.

Saakashvili hoped that the US bolster its support for him with money and materiel, even fast track its entry into NATO an impression given by certain members of Poland's political classes.

Kaczynski's embarrassing motorcade incident in October 2008 was evidence of that at the more cretinous level of diplomacy when it was insinuated there had been an assassination attempt.

Yet FM Sikorski shares blame as a staunch neoconservative after given every indication at the NATO Bucharest Conference in April that Georgia would be admitted.

Russia had no intention of 'bullying' Georgia. This is a propaganda myth used to legitimise NATO expansionism when the truth is that Georgia is a US pawn in a geopolitical struggle for control over the oil and gas of Eurasia.

Which is why Saakashvili had deployed a large contingent of Georgia troops in Iraq and which farcically had to scramble back when it was clear when his brinkmanship failed to elicit the desired response.

That Iraq was about oil is a documented fact, as can be seen in the statements and memorandum produced by Dick Cheney some years before Iraq, Including the task force he set up to explore the nature of the as yet untapped oil reserves in southern Iraq.

The USA has the substantial stake in Iraqi oil because it did not have hardly ant before the invasion of 2003.

This is why it imposed the sanctions regime until it became clear that it was crippling the oil fields and from a technical point of view would have rendered many inoperable as the drilling mechanisms could not be replaced.

As for the scale of the bloodshed in Iraq it is true that jihadists are responsible, though large num,bers were killed in Fallujah in 2005 when civilians were incinerated by napalm bombs.

Curiously, ex-dissidents like Adam Michnik who supported the Iraq War on the basis that Poland is an ally seem to have confined the idea of living in truth to the memory hole.

No mention now by anybody in the mainstream Polish media and political classes about the way extraordinary rendition, systematic torture, or the acceptence of hundreds of thousands of dead is a price to be paid so that Poland can emulate the great car economy of the US.

Here's a challenge: find one fundamental criticism of US foreign policy from any mainstream or prominent Polish politicians-there are barely any.

Iraq was not even subject to examination in the Sejm and public debate was stifled by the media which diverted attention on to the EU entry, a perfect example of manufactured consent.

Allies have partnerships based on equality but vassal pay tribute to retain favour and 'protection' and so the term had direct application to Poland which has yet to refuse one demand the USA has made of it.

Karl Naylor

28.11.2009 20:02

Karl,

That's funny, because Russia might have warned Georgia but it forgot to mention to South Ossetia fighters to stop attacks on Georgia. Examples being, South Ossetian forces opened fire at a Georgian MI-8 helicopter carrying Defense Minister of Georgia, Tsitelubani missile incident 2007 and dozen others.

That's like the US warning Russia not to invade Chechnya and allowing Chechnyan fighters to continue attacks on Russia. What planet are you living on if you think that is acceptable? Now I am not saying Georgia did the right thing by launching the war, and I am not going to get into who started it first, but just pointing out the stupidity of the so called Russian diplomacy.

Let's be honest here, Russia was using South Ossetia fighters to fight a proxy war with Georgia, hoping for Georgian retaliation in order to have an excuse to enter Georgia. I would consider that bullying.

I couldn't really care less what Bush said, I am telling you nobody here said Georgia is a beacon of light. Sikorski is right Georgia should be in NATO and the EU, NATO and the EU have been a stabilizing force for the countries that entered. Georgia if it would want to enter these organizations would need to make certain reforms to make it more democratic.

Only to Russians democratic countries in its periphery are a threat (I guess because they are harder to control). What is the fear of Georgia in NATO and the EU? NATO the so called boogeyman in Russia is not planning on invading your country so relax.

The USA has little stake in Iraqi oil, just look at the oil tenders that have gone out, also feel free to show me a link to these so called Cheney documents.

Large numbers killed in Fallujah? Please tell me those numbers, I want to see how close they come to that million. Not to mention you disregard the fact that these Jihadists are fighting in civilian population zones, any death that occurs is the result of their cowardliness of using human shields.

Actually there are many things Poland refused the US. For one the missile shield, unless America provided patriot missiles, several times sending extra troops to Afghanistan, other than that what is there to refuse when both our interests converge. We give America what they want and they give us what we want. Its called a mutually beneficial partnership.

Maciej Skiba

28.11.2009 20:14

With regards Iraq, the break up of the Iraqi state was a risk that was inherent in military invasion and regime change and one the USA and UK were willing to accept because the prize of controlling Iraqi oil was

In which case, the invasion is still the cause of the bloodshed. No invasion, then no failed state and several hundred thousands of people would be still alive today.

Karl Naylor

28.11.2009 20:24

Karl,

You fail to take into account that Saddam was a mass murderer, who would have passed his legacy to his sons which would have continued Saddam's ways. If anything the war caused more deaths in the short term but in the long term more lives are saved with Saddam and his family gone.

You can keep saying it was for oil till your blue in the face, but FACT is China is the biggest beneficiary of the Iraq war.

Maciej Skiba

28.11.2009 20:34

Karl,

If your interested in the geopolitics of Russia, you should read this article. Just google

"The Geopolitics of Russia: Permanent Struggle" the article is from Stratfor

This is why the West's and Russia's goals don't converge.

Maciej Skiba

28.11.2009 21:24

The contention that Russia is 'bullying' Georgia does not stand up in the light of the facts.

The Tsitelubani missile incident of 2007 is one of a number of disputes between Russia and Georgia since the uneasy ceasefire of 1992 which ended the South Ossetia War.

Irrespective of the numerous border incidents, and what David Miliband termed 'tit for tat' after the facts came out that Georgia had attecked South Ossetia, none of these constituted a direct and co-ordinated military attack.

The Caucasus is riddled with border disputes and seccessionist claim and ethnic irredentism no less than Yugoslavia was. In both cases the USA has sought to exploit tensions to its benefit.

Saakashvili could not have been unaware of the Kosovo Precedent as regards the way the mass media can manipulate the Great Powers into 'liberal intervention' against bigger 'bullies'.

The USA seeks to profit from tensions in the Caucasus if they work for its benefit and Russia works to make sure that they do not. The idea that the 'Old Imperialism' has gone is propaganda.

The USA is a global Empire but believes it is an exceptional power, something that has been apparent to decades for those targetted by death squads in Latin America.

That the USA regarded Latin America as its own backyard does not belong to the past, as has been seen in the constant meddling in the domestic affairs of Chavez's Venezuela and backing for the 2002 coup.

Whilst doing so the USA then prates to Russia about having no spheres of interest whilst consistently trying to incorporate client states into NATO like Georgia by backing authoritarian nationalists like Saakashvili.

It has pursued that policy whilst at the same time having backed the Kosovan separatists in the 1990s, despite their terrorist nature, mafia links and heroin trafficking, as well as the penchant for ethnic cleansing.

Georgia broke the terms of the ceasefire and walked into the hole Russia had dug for it if it was so rash as to contemplate an attack and claimed Russia had attacked it first.

The comparison between Chechnya and South Ossetia fails to hold up for the basic reason that in fact the Chechens have been backed by members of the US political elite.

Most critics of Russia's role in Chechnya have no humanitarian interest but describe the Chechens as "rebels", the view of Berezovsky and other London exiles.

The Chechen cause was promoted by organisations like the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC), whose members were a rollcall of the usual names-Perle, Elliott Abrams and Kenneth Adelman etc.

The Chechens have been shown support by Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin and president of the US Committee on NATO.

Such propaganda outfits are run by those seeking to extend NATO 'protection' and gain new markets for the US military industrial complex, just as in Georgia were 70% of the national budget goes on arms.

Russia certainly has been prepared to back the South Ossetians just as the USA backed the Kosovans. The double standard of the US and Polish elites is that self determination only applies to our kind of nationalists.

Yet US actions in Kosovo in 1999 seem rather more like 'bullying' than Russia's incursion into Georgia which did not involve blitzing Tblisi and blowing up TV stations there.

Sikorski is wrong that Georgia should be part of NATO:for a diplomat who moans about the Poles being portrayed historically as wreckless and irresponsible he ought to know not to live up to the stereotype.

Article 5 of NATO's charter would mean any "attack" on Georgia so construed would mean a collective response and Georgia is far too unstable for and riddled with ethnic conflicts and secessionism for that to be feasible.

Democracy is not any guarantor of stability, a liberal myth: Yugoslavia's successor states were democracies when they willingly embarked on internecine killing and civil war.

28.11.2009 21:51

Karl,

Not bullying? What else do you call it when Russia threatens Georgia not to retaliate but allows its proxy South Ossetia to continue its attacks on Georgia?

Aren't you effectively threatening Georgia that they should allow any attack by South Ossetia and not try to retaliate or defend themselves. Russia would have had much more credibility if they urged both sides to come to the table for peace talks.

But peace in the Caucasus is not to Russia's advantage. Russia needs this area as a buffer state, and they will continue to stoke the flames in the area until the Caucasus states fly into the arms of the Russians.

You know what is to America's advantage in the Caucasus? It's for these countries to be democratic, independent and not buffer states for Russia. Whose cause do you think is more noble?

The country who wants to control (aka Russia) or the country that wants these countries to be free from Russian control (aka USA).

Chechens have been backed by the US political elite? Thats laughable, what support have these elites given, provided them weapons? You have got to be joking me. Feel free to show us all the evidence. On the other hand its Russia providing funding and weapons to South Ossetia.

The only reason Georgia needs arms is because of Russian imperialism, don't blame the US for selling them weapons they need to defend themselves, blame Russia for forcing Georgia to need those weapons.

Your naive if you want us to believe that the US needs the money by selling weapons to tiny Georgia.

Personally I never supported the recognition of Kosovo, either way you consider the USA stopping genocide in Kosovo as bullying? Last time I checked Russia wasn't preventing any genocide in South Ossetia, at it would be funny if it did, because it is the one that is creating the tension in the region.

What's reckless with Georgia in NATO? Yes Georgia is unstable (only because of Russia), either way the whole point of EU and NATO invitation is to bring reforms that will create stability in the country.

Democracy is not always a gaurantee of stability, but majority of the time it is, its worth a try, whats Russia so afraid of? That it won't be able to control Georgia?

Maciej Skiba

28.11.2009 21:53

Americans saying we want Chechyens to be free, its not really support at least not any support that has any meaning. I want hard evidence of these people providing Chechyens with weapons. Feel free to provide the links.

Maciej Skiba

28.11.2009 22:29

No, China isn't in charge of most oil concessions in Iraq. It is making inroads in a way not seen or predicted before 2003 but that does not mean the invasion did not have as its aim control of the oil.

The USA is in because ultimately though the CNPC has a growing stake in developing oilfields, the majority have gone to Western bidders and the US has control over the Iraqi government.

The invasion of Iraq was about control over the oil supply and not the profits from oil to be made only by Exxon or other US oil corporations. But the invasion backfired disastrously.

There is a difference between the USA in 2003 when it invaded for the oil and still possessed the world most most powerful currency and the US in 2009 in the wake of trillions of debt and the crash of 2008.

Hence the intention behind the policy has had the opposite effects but it does not mean that history can be rewritten now. Iraq was a stupendous gamble and sign geostrategical desperation.

Karl Naylor

28.11.2009 22:35

Karl,

China so far has won the most tenders (that is a fact) because Iraq decided to honor the contracts Saddam signed with China. With that said you finally provided a very strong argument, it took you a while to make it but you finally said it.

"Hence the intention behind the policy has had the opposite effects but it does not mean that history can be rewritten now. Iraq was a stupendous gamble and sign geostrategical desperation."

Now if you can prove to me that was USA's intentions, and that its nothing more than speculation on your part, I would be glad to listen to you.

Maciej Skiba

28.11.2009 22:40

If I can say I had these conversation so many times about oil in Iraq (on countless websites), and you are the first person to finally bring that up. I'm a little impressed, it doesn't mean your right, doesn't mean your wrong. It's just now I want you to prove it.

Maciej Skiba

The idea of Russian 'bullying' does not occur to the South Ossetians who regard Russia as a protector and have done so since the war of 1991-1992 when South Ossetians were subject to ethnic cleansing by Gamsakhurdia's Georgia forces.

Mark Almond compares the nationalities issue in the Caucasus to a matriarchical doll of nationalism where small nationalisms are often more brutal than bigger nationalisms at least to smaller ones within their ambit.

Russia is a regional power and does not seek to reincorporate Georgia which in any case would lead to conflict with the West over the BTC pipeline. The pretence that it does is precisely Georgian propaganda.

Moreover, Georgian politicians like Saakashvili and other nationalists ramp up the cause of forcibly reincorporating Abkhazia and South Ossetia one day as part of their domestic appeal.

That has been seen as particularly important when Georgia continues to languish in poverty as a result of following unsuitable neoliberal market reforms which have impoverished so many.

And when 70% of its domestic budget is spent on arms then its hardly surprising that a divertionary war is helpful in trying to rally Georgians behind Saakashvili as he squanders money on Ceacescu style follies like his new palace.

The idea Russia seeks 'buffer states' is absurd. A quick look at the map makes that obvious as Turkey has improved relations with Russia recently and has developed stronger trade ties.

This Cold War thinking in relation to Poland has no relevance when the world is not divided into a bi-polar one with armed camps divided on either side as it was after WW2.

Again, the propaganda pumped out by Polish 'public diplomacy' is a hangover from the past, one can say over determined by it to the point of a dangerous psychopathology.

The US neoconservatives did not really care whether Georgia was democratic any more than geopolitical thinkers like the influential Brzezinski who sees it primarily as a pawn in the Great Game for oil & gas.

Something clear in Brzezinski's support for Azerbaijan and the authoritarian ex-KGB goon Aliev or his support for dictatorships in Central Asia if they support a US interests.

That Georgia must appear democratic was one that is of importance to the propaganda justifying US expansionism but as already established Saakashvili came to power with a rigged election result.

Which is precisely why he has been playing the nationalist card ever since as a means of retaining some semblance of legitimacy and in baiting Russia sufficiently to justify the military financial expenditure.

Georgia has not responding to Russian expansionism: it has functioned as a client state, a US strategic protectorate and has an interest in ramping up threats to keep the money pouring in.

If there is any lesson to be learned from the Cold War it is that Georgia could take a position of neutrality and that the Great Powers should work towards that. But the blame lies largely in neoconservative policy.

Even whilst the US under Obama now wants to cool down the rhetoric and let the issue of Georgian entry into NATO fade away somewhat, the Poles insanely keep banging on about the missile shield 'betrayal'.

This pathology is irresponsible, neurotic and, to a certain extent, a histronic act typical of a certain aspect of Polish national culture formed under conditions of permanent enmity to 'the existential enemy'.

Whilst understandable as a historical phenomenon, it has no relevance in a post-Cold War world where Poland has its well deserved sovereignty after centuries of struggle and Russia is not imperialist.

The Polish elites are no less prisoners of history than the Russians with the exception that the Russians are aware of that as they try state building and to restablish authority across vast lands.

The idea that because Russia was formed by an Empire and the CIS still reflects that and should be broken up is one congenial to those coveting control over Russia's resources but its unrealistic.

This view, shared by people like Brzezinski is founded on double standards. The USA would be little had it not annexed Texas by force in the 1840s and had a hemispherical history of conquest and domination.

29.11.2009 21:15

Let's put aside what happened in the past between South Ossetians and Georgia, because whatever happened Russia is using that now to exploit the situation further and for its own gain. No matter what you say, you can't get around the fact that Russia urged Georgia not to attack but didn't urge South Ossetia to do the same.

I'll even go further than that, Russia was hoping South Ossetia keeps up attacks, forcing Georgia to sooner or later retaliate, so Russia can step in and invade Georgia. Russia no longer seeks buffer states?

Oh man, you have a lot to learn about geopoliticalstrategy. Take example what happened in the Orange revolution, There was multiple meetings between Russian president Vladimir Putin, Kuchma and Yanukovych before and during the elections. Putin repeatedly congratulated Yanukovych while the results were still contested. Yanukovych received a much more preferential treatment in Russian media, and was surrounded by Russian consultants known to be close to the Kremlin throughout the electioncycle.

Why get so closely involved in another country's affairs? Clearly Russia wanted Ukraine as a buffer state. A buffer state is not only necessarily military significant, its could be useful to project political power. Just because you say otherwise, doesn't make it true.

Fact is Russia needs buffer states for its own security, unfortunately that has to come at a price of other independent nations. In addition your right, Georgia is important from a oil/gas perspective, once again thats Russia's fault, its use of oil/gas as a political weapon, is forcing other countries to scramble for diversification.

Georgia must not appear democratic, it has to be democratic, in either case Georgia just released its bonds from Russia, its still a young democracy, its not going to be perfect right away. In either case,
the constitution states he can't run for more than two consecutive terms.

Any action you seem Poland take, is a direct reaction to a Russian threat. Russia uses gas as a political weapon, Poland calls for diversification of gas supplies. Not only does this make sense from a economic point of view but from a national security stand point. Tell me what
you feel is so provocative that Poland does?

Maciej Skiba

30.11.2009 11:34

Your ignorance makes everything you read almost embarrassing to read in itself but the ferocious confidence with which it is asserted ensures the ignorance hardens into a rigid fanaticism.

Part of this means not listenening and part not dealing with the content of the facts and fitting the facts to the rigid prescriptions of the creed. It shows a brittle mind that is incapable of nuance or subtlety.

Having decided 'Everything is Russia's Fault' the task is to remould reality to the dogma. So lacking in facts or evidence the last ditch recourse is to absurd chop logic and semantic word games.

There have been skirmishes on the border since the ceasefire and Russia had no reason to actively prevent South Ossetian rebels doing anything any more than Geogia had in not supporting Georgian militias.

Saakashvili made it clear time and time again that South Ossetia and Abkazia would be reincorporated into Georgia and the 15 Russian peacekeepers killed by Georgian forces were done so on direct orders from Tblisi.

Then being incapable of explaining how Georgia acts as a buffer state, you then focus on an entirely different nation of Ukraine to make a point that backs up a point about Georgia because they have one thing in common-they share a border with Russia.

The problem in Ukraine is not that Russia wants it a a 'buffer state' because Russia has no intention of invading either Ukraine or Poland. Russia accepts the current borders.

The insistance that Russia seeks 'buffer states' shows a paranoid mindset which views Russia as always on the offensive and 'the West' as on the defensive with wholly benign motives of 'democracy promotion'.

Yanukovych was favoured by Russia and though a member of the post Communist kleptocracy in Ukraine he was little different to Tymoshenko who was praised for her shining democratic credentials.

Ukraine is dominated by corrupt oligarchs who value their nation as a resource for them to plunder and the US has only foisted Yushschenko on Ukraine as a client because it wants control of the pipelines too.

Ukraine has been treated as a geopolitical pawn by the USA which remains indifferent to the corruption of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko's regime and also the nature of the dangerous ethnic divisions.

The reason Putin can support the opposition is also because in Eastern Ukraine votes overwhelmingly against Yushchenko whose support base is in the West around L'viv.

Russia has interests in Ukraine because it stands on its border and has large numbers of ethnic Russians who have votes and who along with numerous others do not want NATO entry. Some 70%.

It is true that neoconservative commissars like Sikorski on BBC's HardTalk can dismiss the idea that in a democracy that what the people actually want in foreign policy is not for them to decide.

Yet that hardly backs up the myth that NATO expansion is about promoting the 'democratic West' as if militarism and democracy go hand in hand. It is about energy security.

What Ukraine and Georgia have in common is that democracy is being retarded by constant meddling from both the USA and Russia, with the EU playing a rather lame role.

Poland under neoconservative fanatics like Sikorski who espouse the facade of moderation and dealing with Russia pragmatically whilst ramping up the psychological warfare and war games set back democracy.

The democracy they want is the US style of semi-democratic oligarchy and media managed choice of candidates who all represent the same genuflection to US corporate interests and geostrategy.

That is clear in Georgia where lobbyists make a fortune from investing in PR for Saakashvili, stage managing rigged elections and carefully choreographed coups like the Rose Revolution of 2003.

All contending states in the Great Game deal in double standards and seek to use energy for geopolitical reasons.

Again Iraq was intended with the indea of controlling Iraqi oil as a lever in dealing with China.

The fact it has not worked has no bearing on the fact that this was the aim of the invasion and if a person cannot understand that, then it is clear they are not living in the real world or are in denial.

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The reason for having this overlong post on EEW is to show the nature of the Russophobic mindset amongst a substantial number of 'politically aware' Poles and how works such as Edward Lucas's The New Cold War becomes part of their mental furniture.

This is not surprising when the press coverage in the West,-not only Poland-frame the competition between Russia and the West according to essentialist notions that Russia always acts with secrecy or aggression as it is in its inherent nature to do so

This is particularly convenient when Western oil and gas interests are inextricably bound up with national security and government and provides an agenda for screening from perception the way the pursuit of those interests is going to be countered by Russia.

On Ukraine.

EU officials are casting a wary eye at Ukraine as it prepares for watershed presidential elections in January that look likely to spark a lurch back towards the Russian sphere five years after the former Soviet republic was supposedly set free by the "Orange Revolution".

Simon Tisdall, The EU Turns Away From Ukraine.

In reality this means that Ukraine is little put a geopolitical pawn in the geostrategic game of the Great Powers.

The Orange Revolution was nothing but a mass media event, a carefully choreographed pseudo-uprising which manipulated popular discontent to benefit Western investment and pipeline interests.

There is no point pretending that Yushchenko and Tymoshenko were little more than power hungry players in an oligarchical struggle within Ukraine played over the heads of the Ukrainian people.

The Orange Coalition broke up within months after 2004 as they squabbled over the spoils of victory.

The double standard is that only Putin is, in the title of Andrew Wilson's book, Faking Democracy.

In fact, what happens in Ukraine is increasingly becoming more common in the West too as is clear with Britain and the USA as politics becomes dominated by corporate interests, lobby groups and the pathological struggle for energy security. What US journalist Greg Palast terms The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

The difference is that Ukraine has large numbers of people who live in appalling poverty and hardship, something not alleviated by the creation of new wealthied elites often with dodgy business connections or the mafia.

Nor the fact those like Tymoshenko, who started off with a video rental chain, came by their gas and oil wealth through corruption in the first place.

Yushchenko is little better having been the man in charge in the 1990s under Kuchma of implementing 'reforms' to get IMF support, a policy he continued after the Orange Revolution as his neoliberal policies ensured too much borrowing and a huge crash that necessitated the $16.4 billion bailout from the IMF.

The adherence to the Washington Consensus and US style marketisation is one of the main reasons Ukraine has been hit so hard when compared to states like Aleksander Lukashenko's Belarus.

Belarus has continually rejected a predominant involvement of the IMF in dictating 'reform' in its economy and has not been hit by the collapse seen in its neighbour to the south.

Yushchenko is funding social spending not only to court popularity but also to stave off mass social discontent whereas Western states like France and the UK announced at a European Union foreign ministers in Brussels that they want “strict conditionality” on the next installment of IMF loans for Ukraine.

“There’s real disappointment among many of Ukraine’s friends over the inability to enact reforms” .

With "friends" like this Ukraine does not need enemies like Russia. Not least East Ukraine, with its heavy industries and engineering industries, has close ties to Russia both economically and ethnically. Cities in the Donets Basin have large concentrations of Russians with many working in Russia as migrants, sending money home.

Tisdall's worldview never takes into account the West's responsibility for the immiseration that has continued in the Ukraine.

Conventional opinion in the West often disregards the living conditions of the people who live there in favour of abstract neoliberal dogmas and using loans as a lever to gain control over pipelines and energy.

The cautious approach in Brussels is again raising questions about the EU's apparent lack of a strategic vision – and political courage – in its dealing with its eastern neighbours.

Impatience with Ukraine across the EU is growing, with France and Germany, for example, delaying its accession to the EU's energy community treaty.

The EU hardly lacks one form of 'strategic vision'.

On the contrary, the EU knows what it wants from Ukraine but the idea a liberal democracy can be promoted in Ukraine whilst backing one set of crooks against another just so long as they promise to cede control of the pipelines in the Great Game with Russia is a fallacy.

Moreover, tensions are hardly eased by the continued propaganda from those like David Miliband claiming that Ukraine's entry into NATO will happen in the near future

Indeedto coalition pro-Atlanticist elites to hasten NATO entry without the consent of most Ukrainians could trigger off ethnic conflict between the Russophones and the ethnic Ukrainians

Not least when Western journalists continue to repeat the idea that Russia is a sinister power that is 'resurgent' and fiendishly engaged in engineering some New Cold War, the line of Russophobes like Edward Lucas and other neoliberal cretins who write for the Economist.

As for Tisdall he writes,

More significantly, last year's Russian invasion of Georgia, and Moscow's accompanying claims of Ukrainian support for Tbilisi, have driven home the message in Brussels that forging closer, structural ties with Ukraine could have severe, negative consequences for EU-Russian relations.

They are no 'claims' but fact as Yushchenko has resorted to trying to ramp up the nationalistic mood against Russia by promoting ethnocentric version of the 'Holomodor' and to get them promoted in Ukrainian schools.

There are echoes of Saakashvili's Georgia here in trying to win people over by playing on atavistic hatred and fear of Russia.

But Russia, of course, "invaded" Georgia because Saakashvili attacked South Ossetia fisrt in August 2008 and killed 15 Russian peacekeepers.

As Anatol Lieven has stated, Russia made it clear that it would respond if Georgia attacked repeatedly. So the idea Russia is some neo-Soviet power and the USA 'salvation' that adds to the potential for instability in ex-Soviet space.

Anatol Lieven on Georgia, Ukraine and Russia

APPEARED FIRST IN 2009

Above all, when it comes to the most serious issue dividing Russia and the West and threatening Russian influence in its neighbourhood, Russia has actually won. When the West was pushing forward against Russia, it made sense for Russia to push back wherever possible; but in the wake of last year's Georgian attack on South Ossetia and the West's failure to save Georgia from Russia's response, NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine is almost certainly dead as a nail. This is made even more probable by America's loss of relative power, and immense commitments elsewhere.

In the wake of the present economic recession and the European Union's internal problems, EU membership for Ukraine is also a dead issue. There is no real need any longer therefore for Russia to fear the expansion of Western influence, or to hold back from supporting the West over Iran in the hope of extracting concessions elsewhere. Or to put it another way, it is becoming time that Russia learned to take "yes" as an answer in its geopolitical dealings with the West, even if the "yes" comes muffled in clouds of traditional anti-Russian language like that of Vice President Biden in Tbilisi.

One reason why Russia should do this is that crises in Russia's neighbourhood do not depend entirely on the will of Moscow and Washington, but can be greatly worsened by ill-will between Moscow and Washington. The way things are going, Ukraine may well face a political implosion in the years to come, including a great increase in ethnic tension within the country. In these circumstances, US hostility to Russia could well help turn this from a local into an international crisis.

Anatol Lieven, Russia should learn to Say Yes,RIA Novosti September 25th 2009

A Little on my Life in Central and Eastern Europe

As I was going through old blog material this one resurfaced which I wrote when living in Eger in Hungary back in 2006. I have lived abroad for the most part of the last ten years in Czech republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Japan and now in Bulgaria. I thought I might put it out again as I had some good memories of Hungary

One of the most surprising failures of Hungarian trade seems to me to be the failure to market the magnificent Tokaj Wine more widely in other more Western European nations. The bog standard Egri Bikaver can be found in Britain but it is hardly on the same level as Tokaj.

Roger Scruton has written,

"Hungarian wines are associated with two brand names, one - Tokaji - ancient and honourable, the other - Bull's Blood - modern and cheap. Tokaji is a subject in itself, Bull's Blood no subject at all.....Hungarian viticulture has improved so much in recent years that only post-communist inertia can explain our ignorance of it "

This wonderful dessert wine is made from aszu or 'shrunken grapes', the special shrivalled grape left on the vine until late autumn and which is left to rot to the size of a raisin due to the 'noble rot' created by the fungus Botrysis Cinerea.

A very decent bottle of 'the king of wine, wine of kings' can be picked up in Hungary for about 3000 HUF, almost ten quid if it is three buttonys ( buckets ), a mark denoting the quantity of concentration of the wine in the barrel as it matures.

In London, I did not see this wine on offer in any supermarkets or wine stores, at least at none of the more prominent retail chains.

This is a great shame as I believe its unique taste would be very popular in Britain. Yet it seems that most British people are content to buy their brand name Australian wines. Everything is about marketing these days and quality is not often appreciated because the main aim is to procure mediocre satisfaction with something you know tastes OK and 'does the job'.

Having said that Tokaj nevertheles does 'do the job' as its quite strong. I recommend anyone to go to Tokaj and try this wine as part of a venture up into NE Hungary en route to Sarospatak, the seat of Ferenc Rakoczi himself who was a powerful magnate in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries at the time when Tokaj was a wine at the apex of international repute. Louis XIV called in 'king of wines, wine of kings'

Needless to say the Communists wrecked the tradition of Tokaj producing buckets loads of mass produced industrial rubbish that did the job for 'the proles' but with the end of collectitivism and the return of family traditions of private enterprise and pride in one's own produce this wine surely deserves far more widespread recognition.

As a place to visit Eger is, of course, far more interesting but I would urge a little caution when descending into the Valley of the Beautiful Ladies if you really want to try the local Bulls Blood wine where the majority of the 'Pince' are located cut into rock enclaves with steps leading down into dank and often airless chambers cut out of the rocks..

The old women who run the places are often rather enthusiastic in trapping you there and getting the clientele drunk quickly in order to get them to part with their money. The place is popular with Poles as the two countries have always enjoyed a certain mutual affinity.

Egri Bikaver is a well known wine in Poland in a country that is best known for its vodka, has no viticulture, and appalling beer such as Zywiec which smells as foul as it tastes, though it has not stopped it having a too dominant market share.

A warning though.

Though bread and dripping is amply supplied, a lot of people go there simply to get rapidly intoxicated and local skinheads have been known to beat up foreigners.

The message being here-be careful when wine tasting in Eger if you do go settle down in those cellars . People come out from the Pince after many hours drinking, the cold air hits them and they can get rather nasty.

Eger is a charming town but suffers from high unemployment, a seasonal trade in tourism during the summer and becomes a bleak ghost town during the winter. The dark side of the Magyar character can come out with gloomy alcoholic men stewing in their own pessimism and sense of misfortune in the alcoholic koscma

Anyway, the picture here shows the Rakoczi wine cellar in the centre of the small town of Tokaj at Kossuth Ter 15. I would say that if you like wine and prefer the safety of a more congenial atmosphere then Tokaj is your best bet. Not least in the Golden month of September when these photographs photo was taken.

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Here's a small observation I wrote for an English Language school magazine in 2005. Though I notice that had to get in a few digs about the EasyJet Stag Night idiots

OUT AND ABOUT IN BRATISLAVA. By Karl Naylor

Bratislava is a city of potentially considerable charm which has overcome the drabness and decay of the communist period with a certain degree of success. On the positive side, the National Theatre, the Mirbach and Grossalkovich Palace and the Castle stand out in their full glory. The old town has a lot of charm but seems a little small and, as Bratislava is the capital of a new Slovak Republic, I think efforts should be made to extend the centre outwards more impressively and with elegance beyond the Namestie SNP and around the Technical University. And the ghastly Slovak Radio building justly deserves a few tonnes of semtex; it looks like some kind of alien UFO has just decide to land uninvited in the middle of Bratislava. It is also a pity that the awful and brutal Staromestka could not be re-routed as it cuts right through what must have once been the most enchanting part of old Pressburg, leading up ulica Kapitulska to St Martins Church and up around the hill towards the Castle. I like to walk up this cobbled street on a starry night with the lanterns gleaming, a forgotten area and a relic a vanished life frozen in the past. For me it compares favourably with Michalska and St Michael’s gate which is full of just trendy, boring and overpriced bars frequented by drunken British males yelling, shouting and making the usual nuisance of themselves. Up beyond the castle to the east, rising up the hill is a deeply liveable residential area and I have often walked around there and on to Mlynska Dolina where the student village lies .If I go for a drink, I prefer to go there or else somewhere out of the old town where ordinary Bratislavians go.

Vocabulary: drabness - fádnosť, decay - dekáda, in their full glory – v ich plnej sláve, ghastly - príšerný, deserve – zaslúžiť si, enchanting - čarovný, lanterns gleaming – lampáše trblietajú, nuisance - zlosť

It has not all been pleasure though. I dug up a letter I wrote to the Slovak Spectator not so long after.

Re: One dead and two seriously injured after suspected neo-Nazi attacks, Flash News, November 7, 2005

The violence displayed by neo-Nazi thugs is, of course, very disturbing. However, I can't help wondering whether the violence towards foreigners is not sometimes fuelled by the Slovak authorities permitting hordes of drunken British louts to roam about the city centre chanting and behaving provocatively.

Last week, when Glasgow Rangers played Artmedia, the Rangers fans were determined to plant their Unionist flags all over the place in a way almost designed to provoke fellow neanderthals in Bratislava.

As a result, I was singled out on my way home by a thug just because he heard me speaking English. I received cuts and bruises to my face and body. As a consequence I have decided to leave Bratislava for good.

In all my time in Central Europe, in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, I haven't seen so much misery, despair and latent hostility as in Slovakia. Bratislava can be both brutal and bleak.

Karl Naylor,
Bratislava, Slovakia

Poland, Russia and War Games

Radio Polskie has reported,

Foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski has urged NATO to draw up a comprehensive defense strategy for Poland and the Baltic states, following Russian war games in nearby Kaliningrad.

Minister Sikorski has sent a letter to NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, detailing Warsaw’s concerns over the Russian maneuvers in September close to Poland’s borders.

“When Russia conducts such exercises near our border it arouses our concern,” Sikorski told Polskie Radio.

The Baltic states, too, have been pressing the alliance to consider their situation as the most exposed countries in NATO to any future threat from Russia.

It was reported last week that 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops had performed simulations of amphibious landings on Poland’s beeches, suppression of a mock uprising of the Polish minority in Belarus and the use of nuclear weapons.

The idea that Sikorski is not playing a game here is odd and it seems both he and others in the Polish political elite are being irresponsible in trying to stimulate tensions with Russia because they are still smarting at the failure to get the missile shield.

Radek Sikorski fails to understand that the Cold War finished 20 years ago and despite his air of cosmopolitan urbanity is a nationalist itching to aggrandise Poland at the expense of Russia through getting states like Georgia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan into NATO

Sikorski likes to project himself in his public persona as the inheritor of the Polish noble tradition ( the szlachta ) whose promotion of Poland as the most important of nations on the frontline of states rivalling Russia taps into the histrical consciousness of intelligent Poles.

The downside to it is that it can also reflect an atavistic impulse dating back to the 16th century and a belief, shared by Brzezinski the son of an aristocratic Pole, that the entire history of Russia ever since is a mistake that ought never to have happened.

The idiocy of Sikorski's game is that these belligerent noises servive to confirm the idea that Poland is run by pathological individuals who regard NATO as a proxy for age old struggles that the EU is supposed to be about ending and not furthering through blatant militarism.

The entry of Poland into NATO was understandable as part of its age old security dillemma Yet now Article 5 of NATO means that Russia will never attack Poland. The reason for Sikorski's belligerence is perhaps partly domestic ( protecting Poland from the eternal enemy ).

This is presumably why,

NATO Secretary-General Rasmussen said that he understands Poland’s concern but that the situation is under control.

“The conduct of these exercises obviously did not contribute to what I would call confidence building, so I understand very well why the exercises were a matter of concern in neighboring countries,”

Rasmussen then commented

“Having said that, I also have to stress that we monitored and followed the exercises closely and we did not consider them a threat towards any ally.”

Polands elites are full of too many embarassing buffoons who seem to be prisoners of their history, one overdetermined by the idea of resistance against Evil Empires whilst harbouring messianic ideas about their own history.

Yet the fine declarations of Poland as a liberator nation of 'Christ of Nations' is belied by the grubby and sordid reality of the interests that lie behind the public diplomacy.

Defence Minister Bogdan Klich said this week that NATO must speed up contingency plans, create a special NATO response force and, in future, take a close look at provocative war games on Poland’s border. “These maneuvers envisaged a counter attack while defending the borders of Russia and Belarus against a possible NATO attack,” said Poland’s defence minister. “But NATO is not planning any such attack against those countries.”

This is a pathetic attempt to play on role of Poland as a historical victim, which has a large degree of plausibility, along the lines that has been successfully pursued by Israel, another frontline state that offers a model for lobbyism and the ties to the US military-industrial complex.

Which is why Bogdan Klich supported Poland's refusal to sign the threaty banning cluster bombs because Russia did not and then claimed cluster bombs were essential to protecting Poland from a Russian invasion.

After all, cluster bombs are made by a defence plant Kraśnik, and can be viewed in all their gleaming pride at the company's stand at the Defence Industry Salon in Kielce. Lest people think this is a waste of money ( one cluster bomb costs 10,000 PLN each ) its sales rep Dariusz Szlafka reassures the consumers,

It's so powerful it can destroy an infantry unit, a building, a vehicle, even puncture a runway....

The primary missile explodes above the target. The distance can be set by the cannon operator and depending on it, the submunitions cover a greater or smaller area. A single submunition covers an estimated 100 sq m. Besides exploding, cluster bombs consume oxygen, killing those who have survived the explosion itself'.

So much for 'the Christ of Nations'.

That Poland that ought to have been the major power in the eighteenth century in Central eastern Europe seems a fair assessment given the quality of its leaders, the courage of its soldiers, its high culture and the fact that it had the second written constitution in the world by 1791.

Yet the danger now of Poland feeling it was a nation denied its rightful place as a the feeling that Poland was the main Great Nation in Central and Eastern Europe now entails that it has the right to exert influence over Belarus and Ukraine in such a way that will promote antagonism and division rather than reconciliation.

The people in Poland need to make clear to the leaders that an uncritical acceptance of the risks and hazards of the Great Game are not automatically acceptible and that Western , in particular the US's vision of dominance in Eurasia, is fraught with dangers which ought to be restrained and not encouraged in extremis.

Ukrainian Nationalism and the Holomodor

The politicisation of the Ukrainian Famine in the 1930s has been used recently by pro-US statesmen like Viktor Yushchenko to forge a sense of nationalist victim mentality that can be used to boost his own credentials and extend his support.

This has not prevented crude anti-Russian propagandists in the West like the journalist James Marson from taking a partisan position in The Guardian,

The current Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko, has invested much effort in rethinking Soviet interpretations of the nation's history. It is unfortunate that his political failures have limited the impact of these attempts, which have been largely well received. When a large new memorial was opened last year, thousands of Ukrainians from across the country flocked to see it.

Modern Russia, on the other hand, has not made any attempt to come to terms with the famine, as with many other aspects of Stalin's legacy.

Russian politicians and talking heads argue that it was not genocide, as millions died across the Soviet Union, ignoring the evidence that the famine was purposefully intensified in Ukraine.

Marson then goes on to claim,

Russia does not commemorate those deaths. Russian president Dmitry Medvedev refused Yushchenko's invitation to the 75th anniversary ceremony in Kiev last year with a coarse dismissal of "the so-called Holodomor".

In actual fact, there was nothing in Medvedev's response that was 'coarse'. What he actually wrote paid tribute to the scale of the suffering but rejected, quite sensibly, the attempt to stoke up Ukrainian nationism by pretending it was imposed by 'Russia' on Ukraine.

Dear Viktor Andreyevich,

In response to your messages concerning the so-called Holodomor as well as the steps taken by the Ukrainian leadership on the issue, I consider it necessary to elaborate on our views of and approaches to the issues at hand.

I would immediately note the following. We clearly see that in recent years this topic combined with persistent attempts to receive a NATO 'membership action plan', have become a central element of Ukrainian foreign policy. We also note the intention of the political elite and leadership of Ukraine to use this issue as a 'test for patriotism and loyalty'.

In your messages, you call for 'removing the ideological layers from history'. Naturally, I share this approach. But at the same time I propose that we be absolutely consistent and guided by the principle of fair, honest and non-partisan treatment of historical heritage.

Medvedev does not 'ignore' the 'genocide claim' but disputes it and the attempt to impose a one sided nationalist interpretation which is gathering momentum in Ukraine by post-communist politicians whose dogmatism reflects their inheritance from being Communist apparatchniks.

Marson is stating that anybody that dissents from the idea that the famine was imposed to kill of Ukrainians who wanted freedom is tacitly complicit with genocide and that just reflects the continuity between Stalin and Putin.

Medvedev's response was actually rather dignified ( unlike Marsons vulgar propaganda which, despite its forthright pro-NATO slant was written in the style of the best tradition of Marxism-Leninism with its sensationalism and utter lack of actual historical knowledge ).

The famine in the Soviet Union in 1932-1933 was not aimed at the destruction of any one nation. It was the result of a drought, forced collectivization and de-kulakization [campaign of political repressions of the better-off peasants and their families] and affected the entire country, not only Ukraine. Millions of people in the middle and lower Volga regions, northern Caucasus, central Russia, southern Urals, western Siberia, Kazakhstan and Belarus died. We do not condone the repression carried out by the Stalinist regime against the entire Soviet people. But to say that it was aimed at the destruction of Ukrainians means going against the facts and trying to give a nationalist subtext to a common tragedy.( my italics )

Marson's claim that 'Russia does not commemorate those deaths' does not mean it does recognise these deaths, though it uses the slightly weaselly word 'tragedy', though Medvedev takes it from the statements issued by UN organisations.

The 2007 UNESCO General Conference paid tribute to the millions of deaths from starvation in the 1930s regardless of the victims' nationality and refused to recognize this tragedy as a 'genocide of the Ukrainian people'. And at the 58th UN General Assembly most of the CIS member states including Russia, Ukraine and many other nations issued a joint statement in which they expressed their deepest sympathy to millions of Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs and representatives of other nations, victims of starvation in USSR.

The Ukrainian Terror Famine was not "genocide" because it was not the attempt by one racial elite to exterminate another but was carried out as part of the ideological commitment to agricultural collectivisation and to destroy richer peasants ( the 'kulaks' ).

Ukraine's national development and fertile chernozems, making Ukraine 'the breadbasket of the Soviet Union', meant that large numbers of richer peasants did not want collectivisation and so the terror famine was implemented to crush any resistance to Soviet power.

The catastrophic result can be better described as democide, which in no way detracts from the enormity of the Soviet Unions artificially induced famine. The word 'genocide' appeals only to those who want to use history as propaganda to back the agenda of Ukrainian nationalists.

That Marson has backed Ukrainian nationalist claims is foolish as he has failed to notice that the Terror Famine was implemented by Communists, many of whom like Krushchev were Ukrainian when they were not Georgian, as was Stalin and his henchmen.

Solszhenitsyn was not entirely wrong to describe the interpretation of the Holomodor as a genocide 'a loopy fable' if it is portrayed as a Russian genocide which, of course, it was not. It was not intended to exterminate a race but had the advantage of killing off the focus for nationalist resistance.

That still does not in any sense rationalise the mass murder of millions of peasants as 'the class enemy' but neither should the Terror Famine be used to back Ukrainian ethnic nationalism in a way that could ramp up ethnic tensions in Ukraine just as accusations of genocide did in Yugoslavia.

But propaganists for immediate NATO expansion into the Ukraine in the USA and Canada want people to conflate Russia and the Soviets because a considerable number in the North American diaspora are far right nationalists who see NATO expansion as part of a grudge match against Russia.

With diminishing influence Yushchenko, who derived most of his miniscule support from the West of Ukraine around places like L'viv, is clearly playing the nationalist card in a manner reminiscent of Mikheil Saakashvili in order to shore up a crumbling support base. The irony is that this part of Ukraine actually was untouched by the famine ( it was part of Poland in the 30s).

Those like Marson, who take their propaganda screed directly from the templates laid down by the viscerally Russophobic Zbigniew Brzezinski, are prepared to disregard these realities are have not learnt enough about history of Ukraine. The very people who push the genocide theory often have demons of their own.

The right wing Ukranian nationalists have a dark history of terror and ethnic cleansing as the activities of UPA showed during The Second World War when they killed 200,000 Poles in what had been until 1939 termed 'Eastern Poland', often using atrocious means including sawing people in half.

UPA was also rabidly anti-semitic, dispatching Jews to their deaths as both Jews and Poles were seen as much as the Russians as the national enemy who should be driven out and killed. A tradition dating back to the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648 which was common knowledge and mentioned in literature like Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Slave.

Clearly Marson has consigned all of that to the Orwellian memory hole because it does not fit in with the relentless and needless demonisation of Russia, something which only stimulates Russian nationalism in response and is divisive given the close ethnic Russian links between Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea and Russia.

The Best Freedom and Democracy Money Can Buy

The Czech revolution was celebrated this weekend in a number of events in Prague, which I attended with a couple of English friends, Nick Fraser of the BBC and Everyman publisher David Campbell, who as students watched the Soviet clampdown in 1968. Campbell was there for the invasion and was dragged from the path of a Soviet tank by a young man named Oldřich Černý, who later became a noted dissident, a colleague of Havel's and head of the Czech Foreign Intelligence Service. Campbell, Fraser and Černý have been friends since '68.

Forty-one years later, Černý was our host as we sat in an audience of students at the Arts Faculty of Charles University listening to a debate, Freedom and Its Adversaries. When we entered, I noticed the memorial on the wall of the building to the student Jan Palach, who set fire to himself on January 16, 1969, not in direct protest to the Soviet invasion, as is often thought, but to stir his compatriots into action. Almost his last words as he lay dying from 85% burns were: "I wanted to express my disagreement with what is going on here and to make people wake up."

Looking round at the earnest faces of the new generation of Czech students, it stuck me that liberty will always owe youth — if I were to identify one of the real adversaries of freedom it would certainly be student indifference.

I was not in Prague to watch the student march 20 years ago, but in Berlin I watched students climb the wall and right from the start, the marches in Leipzig were fired by student activism.

Henry Porter, From Prague to Berlin, liberty will always owe youth ( The Guardian November 17 2009 )

The idea the student power in isolation can act as a force for resisting state power and promoting liberty is a myth and the most important movement in bringing down Communism in the Eastern bloc was Solidarity, a broad church which included history professors, staunch Catholics, and workers.

At the conference Freedom and Its Adversaries at Charles University in Prague, Rupnik gets it right when he pointed out,

We opted for the quickest form of a free society after '89 and that was imitation. There was no experiment. We just imitated the functioning market economy. The result is that today we have exhausted that cycle. Our political elites are exhausted.

Not a single new idea. No new people. We are burnt out. We have the institutional shell, but it is hollow.

But whilst true, people like Havel and Stoppard continue to back the packaged designer revolutions branded as "People Power" which are funded and promoted by supposed NGO's with direct links to Washington where there are geostrategic interests.

Ambitious and socially aspirational students who want a fast-track neoliberal consumer culture introduced in Eastern Europe are funded by George Soros' Open Society Foundation one NGO behind the Rose Revolution in Georgia which placed the far right and aggressive nationalist Saakashvili in power.

Globalist idealism becomes a fig leaf for corporate capitalism of the worst kind which it interested primarily in the Great Game against Russia and protecting pipeline routes, so ramping up nationalism has become one way of 'inspiring' the masses.

There has been little promotion of civil liberties in Georgia. Organisations like Kmara in Georgia are mostly advocacy groups who demand 'freedom' from state power if that state power is used by the elites to get to close to Russia. They have little problem with promoting 'reforms' that immiserate the masses.

In Belarus a close reading of the Charter97 organisation's propaganda reveals just how easy it is for the West to pay bored students to provoke the police into arresting them and posting the photos on the website in order to pretend that Lukashenko is some totalitarian Stalinist.

The photos are staged pseudo-events with students being paid so that they can get the latest Ipod or else they are the sons and daughters of far right nationalists who swagger about on BBC interviews at home in combat fatigues without even incurring the curiosity of journalists like Lucy Ash.

Rupnik expressed regret but the important thing is that the lessons of 1989 have still not been learned and Charter97 continues to skate over what kind of market reforms in seeks in such a way that large numbers of Belarussians are prepared to overlook the authoritarianism of Lukashenko.

People in Belarus are not going to buy People People and the irony is that whilst students in the West protest against corporate global capitalism, students in Minsk are demonstrating for it, though they like to dress up their hireling stunts in mock dissidence and the trappings of revolutionary kitsch.

The problem with old style authoritarianisms is the one of making people love their servitude. The decline of liberal democracy and the reduction of politics into showbusiness, the West has overcome this problem in promoting debt fuelled consumerism and a suffocating mass media culture of trivia.

Enough people are given material satisfaction not to care about diminishing liberty and when it comes down to it the erosion of liberty is a result of the terrorist threat which in turn is growing as a result of the West's overdependence upon oil and gas in lands riven with ethnic tensions.

Rupnik is correct that the old dissident generation is "exhausted" and worse than that those like Michnik ( more of a political fixer and propagandist than a dissident in my opinion ) have lent themselves to an uncritical support for George Bush's 'War on Terror' .

Michnik certainly does not think he's a spent force and goes on talking about his role in world history and how Russia is the eternal threat and how Khodorkovsky is some kind of dissident rather than a corrupt oligarch whose rapacious greed and criminal activities have alienated Russia from the West.

Liberal democracy is a good thing but it has to go beyond buzzwords about 'civil society' and 'transition' found in countless banal texts that could have beeen churned out impersonally by computers as well as smug Western platitudes about great and free 'we' are.

There is a need to broaden out dissent into civic forums that motivate people to oppose unaccountable corporate power and to repudiate fake revolutions in Eastern Europe funded to get the 'best democracy money can buy'.

New dissidents need to ask difficult questions about the dependence on oil and gas and how money power is corrupting democracy and not promoting it where 'freedom' is reduced to what brand of trainers one can buy or popular TV shows like the X Factor.

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Porter is very naive here.

Bútora talked about the combination of civic indifference and civic helplessness that has paralysed politics in the new democracies, again something that we know about. There were two specific problems in this "hollowed out politics". First was the failure of imagination that says human beings have certain qualities and one of these is the belief that things can be improved. The second is the failure to join and to become active: "We need islands of positive deviance where we say, 'Please come! Please join!' Together we can achieve much." At this Havel, sitting with Madeleine Albright, clapped enthusiastically. The phrase "islands of positive deviance" sounds like a bit of managerial bullshit but Bútora makes a good point. The revolutions in eastern Europe started with small groups of people who achieved critical mass from very unpromising beginnings.

That's the thinking behind the Colour Revolutions funded by organisation like the National Endowment for Democracy which was so impressed by Butora's work for democracy that it awarded him the Democracy Service Medal. He was the Slovak Ambassador to the United States from 1999 to 2003.

The idea Butora is still a 'dissident' is not tenable and, as with others who demand Obama serve the cause of freedom by projecting US power and influence into Eurasia, he is quite candid about the necessity of having NATO be a protector of energy interests.

The threat to energy supplies can exert an immediate influence on our nations political sovereignty also as allies contributing to common decisions in NATO. That is why it must also become a transatlantic priority. Although most of the responsibility for energy security lies within the realm of the EU, the United States also has a role to play. Absent American support, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline would never have been built. Energy security must become an integral part of U.S.-European strategic cooperation. Central and Eastern European countries should lobby harder (and with more unity) inside Europe for diversification of the energy mix, suppliers, and transit routes, as well as for tough legal scrutiny of Russia's abuse of its monopoly and cartel-like power inside the EU. But American political support on this will play a crucial role. Similarly, the United States can play an important role in solidifying further its support for the Nabucco pipeline, particularly in using its security relationship with the main transit country, Turkey, as well as the North-South interconnector of Central Europe and LNG terminals in our region.

When Obama rejected the neoconservatives plan to construct missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland, Butora was a signatory to the Open Declaration calling for more US involvement in investing in the military-financial complex in the former 'Eastern Europe'.

NATO needs to make the Alliance’s commitments credible and provide strategic reassurance to all members. This should include contingency planning, prepositioning of forces, equipment, and supplies for reinforcement in our region in case of crisis as originally envisioned in the NATO-Russia Founding Act.

This has nothing to do with preserving liberty but in promoting corporate ties betweeen the US and Eastern Europe client states, in making the successor states willing model pupils and advancing the cause of militarised democracy as well as uncritical support for frontline states between 'the west' and the East.

When Butora calls for 'civic participation and engagement it means forging a new elite from the current generation who will become the new hegemonic elite who will overide popular discontent and anti-American sentiments that lead large number of Czechs and Poles to reject the missile shield.

This is about managing democracy and not allowing dissenting individuals or anti-militarists to gain either popularity and power. Its about repressing democracy and liberty and reducing politics to micromanagement and political parties that offer 'choice' but reflect the same interests.

This is why we believe that we should also consider the creation of a Legacy Fellowship for young leaders. Twenty years have passed since the revolutions of 1989. That is a whole generation. We need a new generation to renew the transatlantic partnership. A new program should be launched to identify those young leaders on both sides of the Atlantic who can carry forward the transatlantic project we have spent the last two decades building in Central and Eastern Europe.

This is about creating a self perpetuating oligarchical power structure so that Poles and Czechs are given no real choice about whether their nations ought to slavishly copy the US model of democracy and neoliberal capitalism. Which under the Bush regime started to show increasingly sinister features.

There is now not a peep from those like Havel or Michnik about the use of extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay, waterboarding, torture, the lies and deceptions that were spun to invade Iraq, the napalm death rained down on Fallujah in 2005 or any desire to speak 'truth to power' whatsoever.

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More on Martin Butora as a "dissident".

Martin Butora's waffle about 'islands of positive deviance' and praise of liberty has also been much in evidence in his capacity as a member and advocate of groups like FOS ( Friends of Slovakia ) which has the explicit aim of tying Slovakia together into the US military industrial complex.

On the Board of Advisors is Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski and it's funded by,

Eco-Invest
Northrop Grumman Corporation
Raytheon Company
U.S. Steel
Volkswagen of America, Inc.

One FOS newsletter from 2006 reveals,

On July 18 Friends of Slovakia sponsored a roundtable at CSIS on
Slovakia after the Elections: Domestic and Foreign Policy Implications.

The roundtable drew great interest and about 90 participants from a number of
US government agencies, Congressional staffers, diplomats including the Czech Ambassador, think tanks, VOA and RFE/Radio Liberty, international organizations, international firms, including US Steel and Lockheed Martin, members of the FOS Board of Directors and Board of Advisors and FOS supporters.

The English language newspaper The Slovak Spectator is a supporter and this uncritically pro-US propaganda is given out free on Bratislava's university campus where I lived for a while in 2007.

Brzezinski's track record on promoting liberty dates back to his backing by the Rockefellers and ever since he has acted as an erstwhile backer of the expansion of US oil interests in Central Asia, the master plan of dominance being spelt out in works like The Grand Chessboard.

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Links with Raytheon-The Military-Industrial Complex.

Most Europeans have no idea about the advances of the surveillance state here: about such things as a DNA database containing the profiles of a million innocent ? often black ? people, the number recognition cameras that track our journeys, the 4.5m CCTV cameras on our streets, the CRB checks of 11 million people, the proposals to access data from all our communications and internet usage, the sinister children's databases, the 500,000 people who fell under some kind of official surveillance last year in the United Kingdom.

It's almost too embarrassing to talk about these dirty British secrets in the company of man like Michnik, who spent a total of six years in Polish jails because of his beliefs in liberty and democracy. How could we be so cavalier with our birthright when people like him made so many sacrifices? But at least the chair, Garton Ash, said this: "What is happening in my country, the oldest free country in the world, is that our civil liberties are being eroded in an extraordinary way, like the famous salami ? cut for cut. And nobody is really standing up."

Time to wake up. Time for students in Britain to grasp what is happening.

Certainly Porter needs to wake up first.

A key backer of Butora and the Friends of Slovakia is the US arms company Raytheon who apart from making Patriot Missiles are deeply involved in providing expertise in another two of its four 'Strategic Business Areas' which include,

Homeland Security
Intelligence, Security and Reconaissance.

One ingenious new innovation being pioneered by Raytheon is the Silent Guardian in which,

....a focused radio beam that penetrates the skin creating an intolerable heating sensation. The sensation causes the targeted individuals to "instinctively flee or take cover."

Raytheon is also keenly focused on the use of biometrics to keep tabs on the population.

An End-to-End Solution Approach

To ensure customer success, Raytheon approaches biometrics solutions from all angles, evaluating new and emerging biometrics technologies including fingerprint, facial and iris capture devices, as well as back-end, large scale, biometric matching systems.

Also of interest,

Raytheon has a proven global track record as a systems integrator delivering complex systems on time and on budget.

Department of Homeland Security

Raytheon is working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to modernize one of the largest civilian fingerprint systems in the world. Raytheon plays a key role developing the system by leveraging our experience with service oriented architectures to increase the department's ability to interoperate with other government agencies. The program provides the centralized biometric system for the entire department and now exceeds one hundred million records. The program also includes biometric collection and identity document scanning at hundreds of U.S. ports of entry.

Raytheon's profits have increased since the War on Terror was launched by George Bush in 2001, a crusade supported wholeheatedly by Adam Michnik who also was happy to back the Iraq War on the highly critical grounds that,

George W. Bush may not be our hero, but he is the one we will support in the war with Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, and Saddam Hussein.

Michnik was critical of Bush on the domestic front but it was full of banal contradictory waffle

Do we like the internal politics of the Bush administration, its projects to spy on citizens, or the rightist rhetoric of the Christian fundamentalists of the Republican Party? No, we do not, though we do believe that the American democracy, the wiser for the lessons of McCarthyism and Watergate, will be capable of protecting itself from the self-poisoning of the "open society."

Michnik can 'believe' what he wants but without evidence he is spouting hot air of the sort that made him, in historian Tony Judt's damning verdict, nothing more than a 'useful idiot'. It is not good enough to have such uncritical support for the USA since it is believed to be some fellow Redeemer Nation.

Whilst Butora is a member of the Euro-Atlantic elite, Michnik is more of a fellow traveller having traded one belief system ( he came from the intellectual tradition of reform communism' ) for a new one with the USA as the new global liberation power.

It's odd that Michnik is paraded as some tribune of liberty as he shambles around at the self congratulatory dinner parties where the powerful meet to discuss global affairs and NATO expansion.

Reporting on a NATO Conference in 2002, Martin M Simecka, a Slovak journalist wrote,

We were jammed into a small bar with Michnik, drinking bottled beer and whiskey, when ( Bruce ) Jackson reprimanded us: "The world needs vision and visionaries, you must speak up!" I immediately felt guilty because I had no vision, but Michnik was more resistant. "I did my best work under Communism, Simecka under Meciar. We're not visionaries, we just analyze dictatorships," he said astutely.

Jackson pressed on. "So join a commission which I'm just setting up for the liberation of Iraq," he said, raising his beer in a pledge. "OK then," we replied, disarmed.

Those who protest against US military expansionism are not being 'democratic' in Michnik's outlook,

"Anti-Americanism has similar features to anti-Semitism and is more dangerous, because we still don't recognize it as a threat," said Michnik. "NATO means safety and democracy, yet here in Prague there's no feeling of euphoria. Except for the young people in the streets expressing their opposition to democracy, the city is deserted. We can't close our eyes and ignore this."

Being in jail for six years does not necessarily ensure that the person is unshakeably right nor that what he proclaims has much moral force behind it. Michnik is a windbag and a poseur, though he is not, as some maintain, interested so much in money. Vanity is a driving force too.

Michnik has lost it. He's a spent force and has discredited himself by his support for Iraq and the betrayal of his own principles in remaining silent on US crimes and the abuses of the Bush regime. For it was Michnik who himself argued on supporting the Iraq War,

Brutal power is equally repugnant whether executed under a red banner or a black one.

The belief that there was no rightist or leftist torture, no progressive or reactionary torture, was a fundamental principle we lived by. It led us to reject the hypocrisy of the Western left, which proclaimed that even bad communism was better than good capitalism because it was the former and not the latter that led to a bright future.

That hypocrisy clearly lived on in those like Michnik who applied one set of standards to Communist dictatorships and do not apply them to democracies like the USA which have eroded freedoms as a part of its War on Terror, a declaration of Endless War in which oil and gas in Eurasia are the great prize.