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A Cacaphony of Paltry Frogs
It's all over but the shooting...

4/14/2014

It has been a long, meandering migration--and of course many, many have died and much has been destroyed along the way. But when chickens finally come home to roost, they don't do so one at a time. Rather, it is a massive, simultaneous event, like swallows to Capistrano or Monarchs to Mexico. A cataclysm has erupted over Ukraine, a thundering eclat of global import, and there is no stopping it now. Sure, the dust has yet to settle, and it is still difficult to see the forest for the trees. But my eyes need a break from following the minute-by-minute updates from Donetsk and Lugansk and Slavyansk and Mariupol and Venakievo and Odessa and Gorlovka and Kharkov and Makeyevka and Nikolayev... whew. It's a bit dizzying, like I'm caught in a Tolstoi novel or a Tom Lehrer song--so let me take a slightly loftier view just for a moment.

When the US CIA and their fascist friends concoted the scheme that was Maidan--a classic old-school CIA coup from the very beginning--they doubtless didn't envision things going quite this badly. But there are few thinkers among the lot; so blinded are they by ideological zealotry that they are rendered truly stupid, and the decisions that issue forth from their lair, offices staffed by men and women with small minds and huge egos, are increasingly irrational and bizarre.

It is precisely such offices that now occupy an entire floor of State Security in Kiev, and an equally insidious occupied floor of the hotel by Maidan from which snipers shot and killed both protesters and police. It must have seemed simple to them, simple minded as they are. A replay of the one script they have been playing out since ousting Mossadegh in 1953, and which they have successfully repeated many dozens of times since: Hire a few disaffected locals to protest and stir up trouble. Get snipers to provoke the moral outrage necessary to inflame public opinion by blaming it on the target government--a fact now admitted by the less shrill exponents of the Western media puppet show. Always try to attract plenty of well meaning but gullible fellow travelers.. it has to look legit, after all. When the whole thing comes crashing down, install your chosen fascist or willing executioner replacement whom you have groomed and waiting in the wings. Rinse, repeat, move on.

IMAGE: flag of the Donetsk People’s Republic 

The trouble is this is not the 1950's. It's not even the 1990's, and the hated empire is being more and more exposed as the classic Old Dog who can't seem to learn New Tricks. By sheer mistake, they seem to have awakened a genuine uprising of millions of people who hate the fascists, and whose grandparents died fighting them. Tone deaf to a degree that faileth human understanding, the US and its puppets will be slow to realize--let alone come to terms with--the forces they have unleashed. It is the most significant pushback--and the critical tipping point--since the whole rigamarole began, as it were.

To be more precise, it hasn't quite happened overnight, though it seems it at the moment. US empire jumped the shark in Libya, when a groggy Russia and China were slow to shake off their stupor and realize just how great an existential threat the US war machine really was. They marched through country after country like the Black and Tans through Ireland, burning and pillaging as they "shot down wives and children in their own heroic way.." In Syria, Russia--and to a lesser extent, China--had steeled their resolve not to let it happen again, disappointing the blood-drenched hopes of the rabid dogs of DC along with their apologist cheerleaders across virtually the entire political 'spectrum' in the west. In Ukraine, they again managed to get a foot in the door. But blowback--that dreaded side effect and hangover of decades of US meddling--was swift and sure, catching by surprise even those most predisposed to expect it.

But no matter how long it has taken to get here, the plain fact is that this change is snowballing at a rate we have not yet seen, along the lines of punctuated equilibrium. Nothing organic is gradual, and when things start to change, they do so awful fast. We cannot even know, now that the fuse has been lit, how it will end up. Let me go out on a bit of a limb and make a bold prediction, though my colleagues and comrades may think it reckless or insanely premature of me: in less than five years, we will see a world far different than the one we are living in right now. This isn't the age of Aquarius, nor is it the imagined communist revolution. But the power of unipolar control has been broken. 

There will be more deaths and more destruction, to be sure. It may even be worse than I imagine, and take a bit more time. But the unraveling will be swifter than anyone expects: the end of the petrodollar, the increasing unity of the BRICS coalition and the peoples of the Global South, the rise of new structures to replace the corrupt and decrepit IMF and NATO--the once-modern Bible and Sword of old colonial Europe. China and Russia, particularly, along with the rest of the BRICS, will be forced both to ally increasingly with each other and take the side of the peoples of the Global South against the criminal regimes of the west, led by the people's own demands that their long-ignored needs be addressed. The mask is coming off, and it is more apparent than ever that the west has little to offer but austerity and death. Thanks but no thanks: love the jeans and the movies, hate the governments and the policies. No colony for you... NEXT!

There is no going back. Led by the inspiration of the fed up people of Southeast Ukraine, the people, backs against the wall, are growing more confident and less afraid. And once a people loses their fear, they are a dangerous, awakened giant indeed. Of course, people can be killed--many will be. But who has taken on the Russians and won? Not to put too fine a point on it, but who do these western adventurers think they're kidding? This is a people who have survived unimaginable privation, and more than once. In the west--especially in the US--a decent sized snowstorm strips shelves bare and sends people into a panic. To be more blunt, quoting the infamous General Buck Turgeson: "I'm not saying your average Russkie hasn't got guts. I mean look how many them Nazzis killed off and they still wouldn't quit!" 

Or to be more poetic, I can quote a Russian friend: 

"For the first time in several decades, the Ukrainians and the Russians are in a position and wiling to do something right: to take their country back and restore their dignity. And, we see, millions being awaken just to this simple and powerful idea. The 4th Reich is inadvertently awakening a giant--the people's will and their new sacred cause. No one should underestimate the Russian soul. In comparison with it, the ego of the mightiest superman (Uberman) or Faustian in the West is just a cacophony of paltry frogs." 

Don't touch that dial, folks. Another world is possible, and it is taking embryonic shape right now, before our very eyes...

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(c) 2014 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to danielpwelch.com. Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School.. Translations of articles are available in in up to 30 languages. Links to the website are appreciated.