Throughout the Cold War, the West (calling itself the "free world") argued that the Communist bloc wanted to conquer the world, because for Communism to triumph it could allow no alternatives. Yet the Communist faction advocating a global revolution –Trotsky and his followers – were purged by Stalin, whose own doctrine was "Socialism in One Country," and exiled to the West. Conversely, it was Washington that invoked the threat of Communism to intervene around the globe and spoke of "Europe, united and free."
However, this definition of "freedom" has been most peculiar: it does not allow one to say "no." Arguably, the foundations of what would become the Atlantic Empire were laid down when those who tried to exit the 1791 contract between American states were forcibly suppressed. Lacking a similar enforcement apparatus, the European Union has chosen to bully its member states politically: those that reject its creeping usurpation of powers in referenda are made to vote again till they get it "right," whereupon they have no more say in the matter, ever. This is then applauded as "freedom" and "democracy."
That freedom and democracy are not synonymous, but rather incompatible opposites, is a separate discussion. Suffice to say that democracy is akin to a civil war waged by ballots, rather than bullets – in which whoever commands the most votes (not necessarily the majority, either), wins. But if that fails, there are other ways of establishing authority.
The Meaning of Words
Witness the events of the past three months in Ukraine, where the elected government’s decision to reject a suicidal pact with the EU in favor of profitable relations with Russia prompted the Western-backed "activists" to organize a revolution. Having failed to dislodge the government, the revolutionaries have escalated the violence to the point where Ukraine finds itself on the brink of a shooting war.
Not surprisingly, the Empire/EU axis is cheering on the violent rebellion, painting it as "peaceful protests" against "government repression" and accusing Russia of malicious interference. More than just being sore losers, though that’s obviously the case, this behavior reveals the utter bankruptcy of their own official values.
Thus John Kerry can declare in Munich that the "demonstrators" – who’ve never stood for election, and those who did received votes in the rounding-error range – were fighting "for the right to associate with partners who will help them realize their aspirations." But it is precisely Kerry’s government, and the Brussels bureaucracy that is denying the Ukrainians that right, because they’ve overwhelmingly decided the partner they want to associate with is Russia.
The Welfare Gulag
At the end of January, Seumas Milne in The Guardian correctly identified the driving forces of the Ukrainian crisis as an alliance of oligarchs, fascists and the West. Responding three days later, in the same publication, Timothy Garton-Ash inadvertently proved him right, using the rhetoric of "democracy and human rights" to advocate for enslaving Ukrainians in the EU welfare gulag:
"Look at the shifting balance of world power, and look at the demographic projections for western Europe’s aging population. We’ll need those young Ukrainians sooner than you think, if we are to pay our pensions, maintain economic growth and defend our way of life in a post-western world."
How likely is it that those "freedom fighters" in Kiev are actually aspiring to be the laborers fueling the welfarist engine of Western Europe? How many of them are already in peonage, having borrowed from EU banks under impossible terms to afford the status symbols of "normal living"?
Victoria Nuland’s cookies for their souls and futures – hell of an exchange, isn’t it?
A Cautionary Tale
To see the kind of future the EU and the Empire have in store for them, the Ukrainians have only to look a little ways southwest. Not Greece, though it is a cautionary tale of its own, but a bit further north. After a decade of blockade, bombs, dismemberment and occupation, Serbia was conquered through a faux-revolution – later reprised in Kiev. Then a succession of regimes, each more quisling than the one before, embarked on "transforming" the country and its inhabitants into the proper thralls of Empire.
A recent Bloomberg story covering the start of Belgrade’s "negotiations" with the EU inadvertently showcases the way this was accomplished: through a combination of bombs and propaganda, the Serbians were driven out of their minds, and many are now eager to self-destruct in order to appease their tormentors. Yet as Deutsche Welle so helpfully notes, though, groveling before Brussels is a process that will take years.
Meanwhile, a cult of personality has been created around the Progressive Party leader, the "First Deputy Prime Minister" Aleksandar Vucic. He is the fearless fighter against "corruption and crime," superhero-savior of children trapped in snowdrifts, the man who will "bring Serbia in from the cold." To hear Vucic say it, he can turn Serbia around in weeks, if only he were actually in charge. But alas, the office of Prime Minister is in the hands of Ivica Dacic, the junior partner in the governing coalition.
Hence the snap election, scheduled for March 16, whose sole purpose is to make Vucic the actual Prime Minister, and his Progressives the absolute majority in the legislature, strong enough to amend the Constitution and finalize the surrender of Kosovo.
It is not hard to predict that the March vote will resemble the farce staged in occupied Kosovo in November, when Serb turnout in "Kosovian" polls was in single digits yet the "election" was proclaimed a great success both by the Albanians, the Empire, and the quisling regime in Belgrade. In keeping with the actual tradition of democracy in "Kosova", of the two Serb candidates that participated in the whole sham and ran for mayor of Mitrovica, one was mysteriously shot, and another arrested on charges of "war crimes."
A Very Old Chaos
Pat Buchanan is being entirely too charitable when he says that, "our endless blather about democracy, we Americans seem to be able to put our devotion to democratic principles on the shelf, when they get in the way of our New World Order." He assumes that America is actually devoted to democratic principles. But as events in Ukraine, Serbia, and countless other places before that indicate, the Empire subscribes to the "logic" of Humpty-Dumpty: words mean whatever it wants them to mean, and the only question is "which is to be master."
As Philip Cunliffe observed during a sham election in Serbia in 2007, "what counts as democracy is what the EU decides is democratic."
The "order" the Empire seeks to create, by destroying all alternatives, is neither new, nor much of an order at all, but rather a very old chaos. To embrace it as order means agreeing that democracy is whatever the Empire says it is. That freedom means you’re not allowed to say "no." That there are no laws, no values, no right – only power. And that the Imperial boot stomping on the human face forever is the bright shining utopian future.
Read more by Nebojsa Malic
- Not Quite Goodbye – March 4th, 2015
- MSM Spins Theory That Putin Hijacked MH370 and Landed It in Kazakhstan – February 27th, 2015
- Maybe A Ceasefire, But Not Peace – February 13th, 2015
- Is the New Greek Government a Trojan? – January 30th, 2015
- Russophobia Trumps Terrorism: Media Stir Over Arrest of Chechens in France – January 25th, 2015
jtt
February 7th, 2014 at 5:55 am
Reminds me of the Gaza Strip, the Empire was calling for a democratic elections, but when the people exercise their freedom of choice the democratic principles flew through the window.
Michael Kenny
February 7th, 2014 at 9:28 am
Let's get our facts straight, Mr Raimondo. The Ukrainian government has always said that it wants to sign the EU Association Agreement but that pressure has been put on by Russia not to do so. Thus, the claim that the Ukrainian government "rejected" the Association Agreement is nonsense. If it didn't want an Association Agreement, it wouldn't have started negotiations in the first place. If negotiations had not led to a satisfactory deal, the Ukrainian government would simply have terminated the negotiations. Waiting until a deal is ready to be signed and then suddenly "rejecting" it is credible only in the American cloudcuckooland. Nor indeed would there then have been any reason to refer to Russian pressure. Here in the real world, this, and similar articles all over the American internet, tell us just how big a defeat the supporters of the American Empire see themselves as having suffered in Ukraine and just how thumping a victory they see the EU has having obtained. I entirely share their view.
Nebojsa Malic
February 7th, 2014 at 10:22 am
As Cunliffe pointed out (see the article I linked above), It's only "democracy" if you vote for the designated "democrats." In the logic of the New World Chaos, the designated "good guys" can do no wrong, and the designated villains can do no right, no matter what they may or may not actually be doing.
Brian
February 8th, 2014 at 3:03 am
I can't stop thinking of Malic's columns as its astonishing how the empire is trying to do in Ukraine what it did in Serbia. They are talking of a coalition government that will do whatever it wants! They are promoting violent demostrstions! They have done everything but make the "revolution" have a color! That's too blatant now. Is it because of people like malic that there is no color here? The leak of the tape of nulin is amazing! Malic has been right about eveything. Serbia is going to give up Kosovo and democracy for eu and Ukraine give up democracy. You can vote for any party in Serbia but amazingly you always get eu quislings. Which succeeded in making all serbia quisling. Vucic will pass an amendment removing Kosovo from Serbia constitution too.
Brian
February 8th, 2014 at 3:06 am
Oops meant nuland of course. Nuland leak is amazing. Congratulations!!
bozhidar balkas
February 8th, 2014 at 9:21 am
re: "democracy" NM speaks of, there's at least three kinds:
1) egalitarian [at least on political level if not on economic]
2) socialist democracy [tho still classist, but not with such deep differences in income between classes].
3) american, a special brand of oligarchic or plutocratic but classist democracy with extreme difference in earnings and political power between classes.
so, which democracy has NM in mind?
bozhidar balkas
February 8th, 2014 at 9:48 am
i welcome political conflicts; ie, waging politics against politics [i wasn't ok with what was happening in egypt, tunisia, egypt, libya, palestina, and syria because the street protests in those lands appeared of an apolitical nature; no country should be governed from the street.
i am not ok with it now in bosnia, ukraine, and croatia.
yes to politics against politics; burning, attacking police, occupying govt buildings, etc., only worsens an already bad situation.
yes politics [grouping, organizing, coming up with goals and ways to achieve them] is hard, long, seemingly fruitless labors; so most people reject it and hit the streets instead.
it never works or works for worse only!
bozhidar balkas
February 8th, 2014 at 10:18 am
i am not happy with russian occupation of chechnya. however, its politics towards elected govt of ukraine seems ok with me. russia nor yanukovich welcomes–what seems to me also– a putsch.
as i have said, waging politics [as it is traditionally understood and universally accepted by all lands and laws] against politics is a humane way with dealing with problems arising on political level.
i also assume that just like in croatia today there are already an elected opposition and opposing political parties in both lands.
so why not use only them and not the street and then wage violence!!
surely, the US-EU ad hoc block knows what i just said???!!!
eric siverson
February 8th, 2014 at 10:40 am
I don't share their view
bozhidar balkas
February 8th, 2014 at 12:28 pm
facts on the ground were these: yugoslavia grants kosovo and vojvodina an autonomy.
kosovo was granted a autonomy in the main because albanians comprised about 85% of its population.
serbia, by unilaterally abolishing kosovo autonomy, forces albanians underground; not only on political level, but also revolutionary.
for a comparison to what albanians have done on kosovo, look what serbs have done in croatia in '90 [and later] even tho they constituted just 12% of croatian pop; with half of serbs also being against rebel serbs.
in vojvodina there was no uprising against serbia in the main because serbs constituted, i think, more than 30% of vojvodina pop.
if magyars has comprised 85% of vojvodina pop, i doubt serbia would have dared abolish its autonomy. and for obvious reasons!!!
bozhidar balkas
February 8th, 2014 at 12:43 pm
bears repeating: US was always a plutocratic democracy.
however, no oligarchic system of rule can be set up unless first of all clergy and later clero-noble class renders a vast majority of people ignorant; ie, deprives them of knowledge on political level.
once you manufacture ignorance, you forever wage it. by doing this, you drive masses from getting political.
that's the key to it all: make them think they are not capable of minding their own business; ie, right to participate in governing their country.
almost no scribe i know of has to date divulged this truth.
nearly all [and all on AW] forever plow and plow and never sow.
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bozhidar balkas
February 9th, 2014 at 3:02 pm
t
bozhidar balkas
February 9th, 2014 at 3:14 pm
ok, i'm allowed to post again.
respecting not only the person, but also what s/he concludes, means, posits as true or believes to be true is the key to a sane discussion.
this doesn't mean one has or even needs to accept what people say.
respect, yes–accept, it depends! the only way to be at peace when talking to people!
i don't want anybody's love; you can hate me all you want, i only want from your respect!
eric siverson
February 12th, 2014 at 9:42 am
They will not be able to do the Ukraine what they did to Serbia , because Russia is healthy now compared to the 1990s . Putin told Germany what was likely to happen to Germany in 2006 . I think the Germans believed him too . Germany wants no part of Russia , But the bear would be more than happy to take a swat at Germany anytime they wonder to far east . I should think NATO would learn this after what happened them in Georgia . It seems to me Germany has already more than enough responsibility to take care of their E. U. partners already .