[The two, well-informed, articles reproduced below are arranged in reverse chronological order.
These, however, do not touch upon the implications of the contradictory messages sent out by Putin. On the one hand, he asks the rebels in Ukraine to defer the referendums (towards secession) and sort of accepts the legitimacy of the scheduled national poll on May 25; on the other hand, he goes to (freshly annexed) Crimea to commemorate the military victory in the WWII. The older article, nevertheless, argues: "At this moment, despite the mounting death toll in Odessa, Slovyansk and elsewhere, it doesn't appear that Russia intends to invade, or that U.S.-European sanctions are intended to bite into the heart of Russia's energy export sector." But the situation in the east is really too bad, too bloody and volcanic: < http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-crisis-terror-and-disarray-in-leadup-to-makeshift-independence-poll-9349943.html >. A serious humanitarian crisis is in the process of unfolding, even without overt military intervention from without, at least as yet.] I/II. http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article3389 UKRAINE: After Odessa, "remaining human" as a political programme. Saturday 10 May 2014, by Ilya Budraitskis<http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?auteur491> In the two days that have passed since the tragic events in Odessa, we have heard dozens of versions of what happened. And all of these versions have been, one way or another, linked to the search for a "hidden hand" that sent two armed groups of demonstrators to clash with each other, and pushed one of them into the slaughterhouse at the House of Trade Unions. Most of these versions - from those of official Kyiv to those of Russian propagandists - point to the local police, who in a conscious and organised manner held back from any attempt whatsoever to prevent the mounting violence. These versions of events as a rule then offer an explanatory "scenario", that works in favour of one or other side: Yulia Timoshenko [former Ukrainian prime minister] will sabotage the 25 May [presidential] elections [in Ukraine] in order to ensure her own victory in future; the Kyiv government will intimidate the "separatists" and pin responsibility for a bloodbath on their supporters; the Russian government will get more than convincing arguments to discredit supporters of the [Kyiv] "junta"; the [former Ukrainian president] Yanukovich clan will push Russia into open [military] intervention. In a way, each of these versions sound convincing to us - Russian and Ukrainian people - because we know that none of the forces mentioned would stop at carrying out any crime in order to achieve their ends. This readiness to make victims out of one's own citizens was always a necessary condition for selecting members of the post-Soviet elite. In that elite, there's no-one, no-one at all, who is not morally capable of mass murder. But whatever might have been the initial intention of whoever organised the Odessa tragedy, there will be - or, more likely, already is - another result: the logic of civil war has been let loose, and it is now almost impossible to stop it. For the last month - with its expectation of military operations, occupation of buildings, hostage taking, local skirmishes in Donbass - many people nonetheless retained the timid hope that the whole process was being managed somehow by somebody, and that that meant that it could be stopped. The principal basis for such expectations was not only the will of Putin, the western powers or the Kiev government - but the fact that the majority of Ukrainians were simply not prepared to kill each other. But we need to remember from the not-so-distant history of the 1990s that feeling of that awful crossing-over of a border: friendly neighbours, "soviet people", who over decades had forgotten how to divide each other into "enemies" and "friends", suddenly, within a few days, lose any human characteristics and become absolute beasts, the possible existence of which was known only from patriotic films about the fascist invasion. That was how, after the question of the "state language" was raised, the war in Transdniestr started. That was how Serbs and Croats reached a point of no return, at that notorious football match in Split. All this is too well known not to understand that the losers in these wars are all the participants, without exception. Revenge for the first victims just produces new ones - and provides the basis for new and just acts of retaliation. This is the most frightful result of the Odessa events: for both sides, they have made any vengeance, even the most brutal, justified and inevitable. In the flames that erupted at the House of Trade Unions it was not hard to see the depths of barbarism into which Ukraine could easily sink. Depths, the extent of which seem not to be fully understood by a single one of the bastards who choreographed the clashes on the 2nd of May. Not so long ago, the demand to "remain human" would have sounded like a completely abstract desire. Now, after the Odessa slaughter, it has turned into a political programme. II. http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article3388 Ukraine's Spiraling Crisis Thursday 8 May 2014, by David Finkel<http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?auteur3> This article was published on the site of Solidarity<http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/4174> on 7 May 2014. The following is intended as a brief followup to the editorial in the new issue of *Against the Current* (issue 170), [Notes on the Current Crisis<http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/4150>] where we predicted that the Ukraine crisis and the international tension surrounding it "will not rupture the web of economic connections and mutual interests -- especially Europe's dependence on Russian natural gas, and Russia's reliance on western investment and technology and the global financial system -- that make today's situation so different from the political-military conflicts of the Cold War." Speaking for myself here, I still believe this assessment is valid, but the conflict - especially with the horrific events in Odessa and now an impending full-scale battle for Slovyansk - has spiraled beyond the editors' anticipation when we were mainly looking at the Russian annexation of Crimea. External and internal forces are pushing the envelope in what's become a deadly game we might call "Ukrainian roulette." >From the vantage point of outside observers, we can't pretend to judge the competing narratives of what happened in Odessa (for one gripping account, see Darkness in May. A socialist eye-witness in Odessa<http://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/darkness-in-may-a-socialist-eye-witness-in-odessa/> and a further commentaryWorkers of Donbass divided by Kremlin-backed violence<http://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/workers-of-donbass-divided-by-kremlin-backed-violence/> but we don't know the full story by any means). A few points, however, do seem clear regarding the context and background of this explosion. First, we may safely assume that the accusations Moscow and Washington are lobbing at each other - that the CIA and U.S. military operatives are involved in Ukraine's military campaign in the east, and that Russian agents have assisted local "self-defense militia" seizures of town centers and police stations - are largely accurate, while each is lying about its own role. Second, we must be clear that the expansion of NATO to Russia's borders - mainly during the 1990s, when Russia was too weak to do anything about it - was a dangerous provocation that would inevitably produce a counter-reaction. By humiliating and threatening a vanquished former superpower rival, NATO pretty much ensured it would reap a whirlwind sooner or later - and if anything ensured this outcome, it was the notion of eventually incorporating Ukraine into NATO as well. Third and perhaps most important immediately, events on the ground appear driven by fear all around. As Ukraine's economy verges on collapse, in the east the popular fear is that the European Union's "reforms" will turn their industrial base, what's left of it, into a rusted-out wasteland. In western Ukraine, the great fear is that "federalization" (fragmentation) of the country by Russian proxies will perpetuate the misery of poverty, corruption and rule by oligarchs. Both sets of fears, which seem entirely well-founded, are now overlaid by toxic appeals to nationalism and linguistic identities. That would explain why extreme rightwing nationalist forces, on both sides, attract popular support which they would never receive otherwise. But none of these elements offer any solution to Ukraine's crisis or to maintaining its fragile integrity as a unified state. They point to the danger of Ukraine becoming the next Yugoslavia. Ukraine cannot survive either as a NATO protectorate under the European Union's savage economic dictates, or as a weak confederation of regional fiefs pulled apart and picked off by Russia and its proxies. Its future depends on the emergence of internal forces with a positive social program that can overcome the spreading waves of fear and hatred. If the international left can contribute anything to making such a development possible, it must be by calling for an end to all external intervention and an immediate cease-fire by all military and militia forces. At this moment, despite the mounting death toll in Odessa, Slovyansk and elsewhere, it doesn't appear that Russia intends to invade, or that U.S.-European sanctions are intended to bite into the heart of Russia's energy export sector. Russia's appetites on Ukraine must be constrained by the cautionary maxim "you break it, you own it" as the United States so disastrously learned in Iraq, while western powers know too well the costs of hitting Russian corporations - not merely the personal accounts of oligarchs who own them - that supply everything from Europe's natural gas to the United States' rocket launchers. Nonetheless, the crisis is closer to the point where one explosion or tactical miscalculation might overtake the rational calculations of imperial state interests, on which the analysis in the ATC editorial statement was premised. We don't know what the consequences of that would be, and we don't want to find out. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. 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