Reprinted from Facebook (2018/02/15): It’s very uncharacteristic of the Kremlin to blatantly violate international law (they typically make sure to follow its letter). So what explains the increasingly unequivocal signs of Russian military involvement in Crimea? The fact of the matter is that Russia has a legal right to military transit across Crimea SO LONG AS it […]
Reprinted from Facebook (2018/02/15): From what I am observing on Twitter, things are rapidly spiraling beyond our usual frames of reference so far as Ukraine is concerned. Yanukovych, nowhere to be seen, is fast becoming something of an irrelevance so far as both sides are concerned. The new government is being formed without his input, and he
A discussion on Crosstalk with Peter Lavelle in which I appeared discussing the Nuland leak. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLHXpCRPo-k I found some of the comments made by Taras Kuzio frankly surreal but judging from what I read on Kyiv Post he is pretty mainstream in Ukrainian opposition terms. Two weeks earlier in an interview on RT I said
In my last Sitrep I said that the West was trying to pull off a coup in Ukraine against the duly elected President. We now have very strong evidence in the shape of an intercepted phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. They talk about how
Reprinted from Facebook (2018/02/15): The reason the police were “barely in control” is that Yanukovych demoralized them by criticizing them for breaking up yesterday’s Maidan, in a bid to appease protesters who will not be appeased. Apparently, the ProFFesor believes balancing between two stools is a good strategy for Ukrainian domestic politics too. What other explanation can
My latest for US-Russia.org Expert Discussion Panel on whether to view the recent Georgian elections, in which Saakashvili’s United National Movement lost a lot of power, as a Kremlin coup or a triumph of democracy. My view that it isn’t really either: Two dominant themes prevailed in media coverage of the 2012 Georgian elections (1) The
Here’s the video. Big thanks to the guys at RT, the channel that has been at the forefront of covering OWS for providing me with this opportunity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKW3KIc0zZs I was contacted by RT after they noticed my post on why OWS isn’t happening in China and Russia. As befits a program aimed at an American audience, however,
As repeatedly noted by Mark Adomanis, the Russian liberals and the Western media have predicted about 10 of the last zero Russian revolutions. Likewise, the “Jasmine Revolution” in China that was the subject of so much talk about a year ago has fizzled out like a wet firework. Meanwhile, the Arab world remains in the
Riding on the apathy of the masses, crony Communists rig the elections in a small, corrupt post-Soviet backwater to retain their iron grip on power. But their dastardly plans to crush democracy and draw benighted Moldova back into the Eurasian darkness are foiled by the heroic students of Chisinau. Inspired by their boudiccan (and photogenic)
The classic Marxist argument holds than an emerging bourgeois class, its wealth based on commerce, industry and capital accumulation, was constrained and frustrated in its political ambitions by the nobility. France was divided into Three Estates, the Third Estate which bore the taille (the main direct tax), the nobility (subject only to the capitation poll