zuzak20140206Buchanan.html

Will Mobocracy triumph in Ukraine?

From:    William Zuzak <[email protected]>
Sent:    Thu 2014-02-06 12:20 AM
To:        [email protected]
Cc:       Will Zuzak

Dear Patrick Buchanan:

I retain fond memories of you from the era of the John Demjanjuk show trials. I have also enjoyed many of your articles on historical and recent world events. Unfortunately, your ”hit” piece on the situation in Ukraine has shattered my illusions.

To refer to the peaceful demonstrations on Euromaidan (Maidan Nezalezhnosty = Independence Square) in Kyiv -- numbering in the hundreds of thousands on weekends -- as a “mob” is erroneous and hurtful. These demonstrations were and remain peaceful. The violence was initiated by the vicious attack by Yanukovych’s Berkut forces on the demonstrators at 4:10 AM, 30Nov2013. Another attempt at a violent dispersal of the demonstrations was successfully repulsed on 11Dec2013. The later violence on Hrushevsky Street (some 200 meters removed from Euromaidan) between young hotheads (and/or provocateurs) and Berkut served to prevent further planned attacks by Berkut on the main Euromaidan encampment. Since then there have been numerous instances of unwarranted arrests, beatings, torture and even deaths.

Since his election as president in 2010, Viktor Yanukovych has methodically been creating a brutal police-state dictatorship to be ruled by terror very similar to the former Soviet Union (or now presently existing in Belarus and the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin). The Ukrainian people have been desperately trying to stop and reverse this trend toward dictatorship. The Ukrainian people do not expect military aid from Europe or the United States. However, they do expect that the West will apply visa sanctions against members of Yanukovych’s regime and enforce existing laws against money laundering against them and the Oligarchs. Surely, it would be in the West’s interest to fight organized crime, which has also infiltrated financial and bureaucratic institutions around the world.

I would urge you to read my two latest GRC Reports as reproduced in the links below:
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To access my GRC Report for 05Feb2014 archived at http://www.willzuzak.ca , please click one of the links below:
http://bit.ly/1nQQ0VM
http://www.willzuzak.ca/cl/grc/zuzak20140205GRC.html

Of particular importance this month is the article by Anton Shekhovtsov titled "Pro-Russian network behind the anti-Ukrainian defamation campaign":
http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.de/2014/02/pro-russian-network-behind-anti.html
which documents the people in the West deliberately undermining Ukraine's independence and aspirations for democratic values.
**** ****
To access my GRC Report for 01Jan2014 archived at http://www.willzuzak.ca , please click one of the links below:
http://bit.ly/1aopGcc
http://www.willzuzak.ca/cl/grc/zuzak20140101GRC.html

The month of December 2013 is likely to be recorded as a decisive turning point in the history of Ukraine -- for better or for worse. Vladimir Putin and his cronies are doing their utmost to either subjugate or dismantle Ukraine. The massive Euromaidan demonstrations in Kyiv, initiated to pressure the government to honour its commitment to sign the European Association Agreement, has now morphed into a country-wide struggle against the corruption endemic within Ukrainian society.

During the past 22 years, the criminal element (Mafia) has entrenched itself in all the power structures -- government (Yanukovych, Azarov), political parties (Party of Regions), economy (billionaire Oligarchs), education (Tabachnyk), the legal system (courts, judges, prosecutors, detention centres), the police (Berkut, Militia, road police, SBU) and perhaps the military. This has led to Ukrainians having the lowest standard of living in Europe. In the past, Ukrainians were looking for salvation in Europe, America and/or Russia. Now they are looking into their own souls. The new Maidan has proposed a complete country-wide restructuring of Ukrainian society. May God help them.
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In conclusion, I hope that you will have occasion to write a more positive analysis of the situation in Ukraine in the future.

Hopefully respectfully yours
Will Zuzak; 2014.02.06; 00:20 hrs

WND | 04Feb2014 | Patrick Buchanan
http://www.wnd.com/2014/02/will-mobocracy-triumph-in-ukraine/

Will Mobocracy triumph in Ukraine?

Despite 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.

In 2012, in the presidential election in Egypt, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood won in a landslide. President Obama hailed the outcome.

One year later, the Egyptian army ousted and arrested Morsi and gunned down a thousand members of his brotherhood. The coup was countenanced by John Kerry who explained that the Egyptian army was “restoring democracy.”

Comes now the turn of Ukraine.

In 2010, Viktor Yanukovych, in what neutral observers called a free and fair election, was chosen president. His term ends in 2015.

[W.Z. Since his election in 2010, Mr. Yanukovych has been methodically establishing a police state -- by illegally changing the constitution to give himself more presidential powers; by increasing the funding of the Berkut repressive forces manifold so as to suppress opposition. (See Engilsh-language translation of Oleh Tyahnybok's speech to the Euromaidan on 29Dec2013.)]

Yet since November, protesters have occupied Maidan Square in Kiev, battling police and howling for Yanukovych’s resignation. The United States appears now to be collaborating with Europe in bringing about the neutering or overthrow of that democratically elected government.

Military coups, a la Cairo, and mob uprisings, a la Kiev -- are these now legitimate weapons in the arsenal of democracy?

What did Yanukovych do to deserve ouster by the street? He chose Russia over Europe.

[W.Z. No! To retain power and riches, Viktor Yanukovych chose to return to the Soviet terror a la Stalin (Holodomor, Great Terror, the Gulags) over freedom and democratic values. He chose "Evil" over "Good". He chose Berkut "Terror" over "Dialogue".]

In the competition between Vladimir Putin and the European Union over whose economic association to join, Yanukovych was betrothed to the EU. But after an offer of $15 billion from Putin, and a cut in fuel prices to his country, Yanukovych jilted the EU and ran off with Russia.

Yanukovych felt he could not turn down Putin’s offer. [Of course not! He needs the money to pay his Berkut repressive forces, his "titushky" and his so-called anti-Maidan demonstrators bussed in from the East and Crimea.]

Western Ukraine, which favors the EU, was enraged. So out came the protesters to bring down the president. And into Kiev flew John McCain to declare our solidarity with the demonstrators.

[W.Z. The majority of Ukrainians -- East, West, North, South -- who support democracy over terror were outraged.]

Kerry has now joined McCain in meddling in this matter that is none of America’s business, declaring in Munich that, “Nowhere is the fight for a democratic European future more important than today in Ukraine.”

We “stand with the people of Ukraine,” said Kerry.

[W.Z. Does Mr. Buchanan expect Mssrs. McCain and Kerry to support Soviet-style terror over democracy? Does Mr. Buchanan support terror over democratic values? Does he prefer corruption over the rule of law?]

But which people? The Ukrainians who elected Yanukovych and still support him or the crowds in Maidan Square that want him out and will not vacate their fortified encampments until he goes?

Kerry is putting us on the side of mobs that want to bring down the president, force elections and take power. Yet, Americans would never sit still should similar elements, with similar objectives, occupy our capital.

[W.Z. One million peaceful demonstrators on Euromaidan Square is a mob? Perhaps one can refer to the young hotheads and provocateurs on Hrushevsky Street throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails and the Berkut forces shooting rubber bullets and throwing stun grenades in return as a mob, but certainly not the Euromaidan demonstrators.]

Reportedly, we are now colluding with the Europeans to cobble together an aid package, should Yanukovych surrender, cut the knot with Russia and sign on with the EU.

But if Putin’s offer of $15 billion was a bribe, what else is this?

While he rules a divided nation, Yanukovych has hardly been a tyrant. As the crowds grew violent, he dismissed his government, offered the prime ministry to a leader of the opposition, repealed the laws lately passed to crack down on demonstrations and took sick for four days. [On the contrary, Mr. Yanukovych is a tyrant as explained several times above.]

But the street crowds, sensing he is breaking and smelling victory, are pressing ahead. There have now been several deaths among the protesters and police.

Putin is incensed, but inhibited by the need to keep a friendly face for the Sochi Olympics. Yet he makes a valid point.

[W.Z. As stated in my GRC Report of 01Jan2014, "Vladimir Putin and his cronies are doing their utmost to either subjugate or dismantle Ukraine". Is Patrick Buchanan one of Putin's cronies?]

How would Europeans have reacted if, in the bailout crisis, he, Putin, had flown to Athens and goaded rioters demanding that Greece default and pull out of the eurozone?

How would the EU react if Putin were to hail the United Kingdom Independence Party, which wants out of the EU, or the Scottish National Party, which wants to secede from Great Britain?

Ukraine was briefly independent at the end of World War I and has been again since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Still the religious, ethnic, cultural and historic ties between Russia and Ukraine are centuries deep.

Eight million Ukrainians are ethnic Russians. In east Ukraine and the Crimea, the majority speak Russian and cherish these ties. Western Ukraine looks to Europe. Indeed, parts belonged to the Habsburg Empire.

Pushed too far and pressed too hard, Ukraine could disintegrate.

Security police who have questioned jailed rioters seem to believe we Americans are behind what is going on. And given the National Endowment for Democracy’s clandestine role in the color-coded revolutions of a decade ago in Central and Eastern Europe, that suspicion is not unwarranted.

Nor is Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov entirely wrong when he says that “a choice is being imposed” on Ukraine, and European politicians are fomenting protests and riots “by people who seize and hold government buildings, attack the police and use racist and anti-Semitic and Nazi slogans.”

If, as a result of street mobs paralyzing a capital, a democratically elected Ukrainian government falls, we could not only have an enraged and revanchist Russia on our hands, but a second Cold War.

And we will have set a precedent that could come to haunt Europe, as the rising and proliferating parties of the populist right, that wish to bring down the European Union, learn by our example.

[W.Z. Let us hope that history will not judge Patrick Buchanan as being complicit in helping Vladimir Putin succeed in reimposing Soviet-style terror in Ukraine and/or dismantle Ukraine.]