10/29/14 – Nebojsa Malic – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, Scott Horton here.
I want to tell you about this great new book, Live in La Vida Baroca, American Culture in an Age of Imperial Orthodoxies by Thomas Harrington.
While he comes from the left, Harrington has little time for much of what is passed off under that label today.
Like us libertarians, he puts peace and freedom first.
The book's got great essays on American fascism, empire, the Israeli occupation, the left and Obama, liberalism in the state, and some interesting lessons from the history of imperial Spain.
Live in La Vida Baroca by Thomas Harrington.
Check it out at scotthorton.org slash books or scotthorton.org slash Amazon.
All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Next up is Nobosa Malic.
He writes moments of transition for antiwar.com.
That's original.antiwar.com slash Malic or just look for his name in the right hand margin there.
It's M-A-L-I-C.
I probably still ain't saying it right.
I'm trying, though.
Hey, Nobosa, how are you doing?
Good, Scott.
Good to be back on the show.
Very good to have you here.
I appreciate it.
Now, I know mostly your beat is the Balkans, but man, I know so little about the Balkans, I don't even know what to ask you.
Maybe I could ask you what to ask you in a minute, but can we start with the elections in Ukraine today?
Of course.
I actually just wrote a piece about those for RT on Saturday, which posted at the same time as my latest column on antiwar.com.
Oh, well, if only you had sent the different columns to the different directions, I would have read it by now.
That's all right.
So yeah, let me know.
What happened?
Who all participated and who came out on top?
Well, apparently from the information it's dribbling in from the Ukrainian media, very few people actually participated.
Their turnout rates that have been confirmed are very, very low.
Under 50 percent is what I've last heard of the close to 30 something percent, really.
In most of the southern and eastern regions, the turnout has been very, very low.
People have nobody to vote for because all of the until recently strong political parties have either been banned or intimidated into not participating, such as the party of regions and the communists, which I know it's ironic that the communists stand for moderation in this context.
But considering who's up against them, which is people that celebrate the 1940s Nazi heritage openly.
Yeah, it's one of those ironies of history.
The slate of candidates that was on offer was pretty much more of the same of the people currently in power, essentially the oligarchs, the Nazis and the oligarch Nazis.
And it's very difficult to see to say who exactly may or may not have won.
My money's on the oligarch Nazis just because of the whole setup.
But yeah, from everything that that I've seen over the past few days, it looks like it was just a giant exercise in manufacturing legitimacy for the current regime and that they're all likely to turn much more aggressive now that they have successfully organized this whole.
Look at us.
We have legitimacy because elections charade.
Yeah, which they can cancel whenever they want.
It will.
Well, I mean, they just toppled the government in a coup back in February.
So for these people to talk about democracy is really, really rich.
Right now.
Yeah, no doubt about that for anybody who remembers last February, which was a real time that happened.
I remember there was a coup now.
So as far as the so-called pro-Western parties, which I guess means the ones the Americans are supporting, whether they support us back or not might be a separate question.
Who won out?
How did the avowed Nazis do compared to the hey, we're just radical nationalists parties?
Well, again, from the figures that I've seen, and that was about yesterday, I haven't really checked on the latest data today.
The overt Nazis have not exactly fared too great.
They got single digit support.
But the party that seems to have won out is essentially called the Popular Front.
And it belongs to the current prime minister who is who has been doubt our man Yats by Undersecretary Newland in that infamous January phone intercept.
So essentially, it was Washington's stooge that ended up confirmed in power.
And the second place, according to the latest results, was taken by the supporters by the party organized around the current president, Poroshenko, who is a former oligarch.
So from just those two top results, it seems like the oligarchs have won.
And, you know, U.S. stooges seem to have triumphed pretty conclusively.
On the other hand, the radicals, the actual party called the Radical Party, won a large chunk of votes.
And another party, is it a safe assumption that the Americans would prefer that these more avowed Nazi types would not come out ahead?
I mean, it is at least bad public relations, not that they care, but it's all about perception management.
I mean, if you can, if you can have an organized an election in which, you know, the self-proclaimed pro Western moderates triumph, and you know, it's one of those, it doesn't matter who actually wins, it matters how the press labels them, then you can say, okay, there's no Nazis on it, or if there are any Nazis, they're on the margins, and this is all bad Russian propaganda.
Let's go back to the business of blaming Russia for everything.
What, you know, the information I've received from multiple sources indicates that essentially all of the parties involved were in one way or another, financed by this group of oligarchs that, as I've said previously on the show, make the Game of Thrones sound almost pastoral in comparison.
So it's a very ugly situation, and it's no wonder that most of the people in Ukraine feel like they have nobody to vote for, because whoever, you know, whether they vote for Kang or Kodos, it's going to be the same for them in the end.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Hey, that one was on.
You watch that too, they're doing the Halloween episode on FXX.
Yeah, no, it's a good one.
So yeah, no, the Svoboda Party, I saw the Svoboda Party and the Radical Party doing so well, and I thought, well, you know, I don't know if it matters or not, but if it mattered, it seems like that would really matter.
You know, the last time that they held some kind of pseudo-election, the great big talking point was that, oh no, see, the Nazis did so poorly in the election, nobody really supports them, and they were the, you know, smallest and least consequential part of the Maiden Movement, and, you know, these kind of talking points, and yet...
Well, that's the problem with the talking points.
You know, the perception management says the Nazis are few in number and irrelevant.
Few in number compared to the most of the population, of course.
But they're the people who are organized, they're the people who have guns, and they're the people with the willpower to use them, and they have been using them.
And so you have this legislature that doesn't really do much of a muchness, except rubber stamp laws that they've copied over from Brussels and Washington, and also honoring, you know, they've declared the Ukrainian nationalists from World War II that collaborated with the Nazis to be, you know, heroes and liberators just recently.
That was the extent of their lawmaking.
But on the other hand, you have people with actual power who are actually doing things in that country, and those are the oligarchs and the Nazis.
And so, you know, the elections themselves are really pointless, and again, the low turnout suggests that most people realize this.
Because again, you can elect any sort of parliament you want, but if the parliament can be disbanded by thugs and guns, who has the real power, the parliament or the thugs with guns?
The thugs with the guns.
That's the way it seemed.
I mean, they just, you know, as soon as they came to power, they handed over a chunk of the budget to this guy, Dmitry Yarosh, and said, make your stormtroopers the new National Guard.
Yes, and that National Guard has not...
In other words, go east, leave Kiev, we're scared to death of you.
Well, that's definitely one dynamic at work.
There's a lot of people suggesting with good reason that part of Kiev's aggressiveness is the desire to have all of these Nazis actually get themselves killed fighting the rebels in the east.
They have been doing a really good job of getting themselves killed, mind you, but they've also been murdering civilians left and right, and essentially alienating that entire population.
The information coming out of the east, as well as Odessa, where let's remember there was a horrible massacre of people back in May, where the people protesting the government were essentially boarded up in a building and set on fire.
There's just terribly low turnout in both Odessa, as well as the two regions that are in rebellion, and parts of them are being occupied by the government forces.
Of course, according to Ukrainian media, everything's fine.
You know, the turnout is over 99%.
Everybody loves the government, but we've heard this story before.
All right.
Well, I'm sorry, we got to take this break.
Hold it right there.
We'll be right back with Novoselic from Antiwar.com right after this.
Just click the book in the right margin at scotthorton.org or thewarstate.com.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Novoselic from Antiwar.com, talking about the situation in Ukraine.
So, yeah, tell us more about the situation in the east, if you can, about the so-called ceasefire.
I see reports of fighting on both sides all the time.
Well, along most of the line the ceasefire has been holding, the exception have been a couple of really strategic places, including the Donetsk airport, which has been a site of heavy fighting between the government forces and the Nazi guard, as well as the rebels, who have, I believe, according to the latest reports, taken most of the airport, and there's just fighting in the tunnels beneath it.
It was a major military base in the Soviet days, so it's a hive of warrens and tunnels.
The latest I heard right before the election was that the rebels were preparing for a potential government defensive because they've been hit by ballistic missiles fired by government forces that have destroyed several factories and industrial complexes, and they were expecting a government attack after the election.
That hasn't materialized just yet, doesn't necessarily mean it won't, but it doesn't mean it will.
It's already end of October, winter is coming, snow has already hit Russia, and it's not far behind in Ukraine, so I would not really be surprised if there was no offensive just because the weather is so terrible, but again, anything is possible.
The problem is that nothing has substantially changed in Kiev.
The people that have taken over power in February and have been encouraged by Western governments through media as well as political pronouncement, not necessarily so much in cash.
Ukraine has gigantic debts it can't possibly cover without some sort of Russian assistance or an agreement with Russia, which is what they've been negotiating for the past six months, but understandably, Moscow isn't very inclined to give them money in exchange for them killing Russians left and right.
But nobody's really addressing Ukraine's economic problems, which are only getting worse under this government.
But the people in charge in Kiev are perfectly happy to carry on because they themselves are getting funding from the US taxpayers, from Europeans, in military aid, benefiting the military-industrial complex immensely.
They don't really necessarily care about the rest of the country under their rule because they figure the worse the better.
If we can have people that are absolutely miserable, they're going to beg us to save them from themselves, which is essentially how governments operate anywhere.
Just some are more sophisticated about it than others, and these guys are not sophisticated at all.
So again, things are very much reminding me of what I witnessed 20 years ago back in the Balkans.
It's almost the same script, and they're even using the same type of people as actors, the Nazis, the frustrated nationalists from the fringe, the oligarchs.
It's amazing how in all sorts of places in the world you can find the identical types of characters that will just do foreigners bidding for a fistful of dollars.
I guess amazing is the wrong word.
I think it's more both frustrating and appalling, really.
Well, so now do you think that, I think it was Putin's statement that the Americans, you know, they back the jihadists in Syria, they back the Nazis in Ukraine, but then they singe their fingers and recoil and pull away.
Is that, you know, a correct description, do you think, of what America's doing now?
It's kind of saying, oh geez, well, what do we mean to accomplish here with this, you know?
I think it's putting it politely.
Let's face it, that's a fact.
That particular statement of his, as well as others, are factually true.
We had Zbigniew Brzezinski boasting in the years before September 11 how he essentially created the mujahideen in Afghanistan as a way to, you know, create a Soviet Vietnam.
And when the French reporter asked him, well, you know, do you think there might be any fallout from this, he said, oh please, what is more important, some riled-up ragheads or the fall of communism?
And sure enough, you know, just three or four years later, the quote-unquote riled-up ragheads became a much bigger issue.
So yes, the U.S. has been going around the world backing these insurgencies, you know, overthrowing governments left and right, and doing all these things in the name of liberty and democracy.
Oh, no question about that.
I'm asking about the singed and the recoiling part, you know, the backing off.
I don't see the recoiling.
Yeah, that's the part, I think, where Putin was much too charitable.
I don't see the U.S. government actually ever regretting their actions.
They systematically deny that they've ever made any mistakes.
You know, sponsoring jihad in the Balkans, no, that never happened, never happened.
And then all of a sudden you have a thousand Balkans Muslims fighting with ISIS, and people, you know, the media are saying, oh, how horrible, how terrible, this must have been because of the wars.
Yeah, it has been because of the wars.
We've been trying to alert you to this for 15 years, and you didn't pay attention because you wrote it off as, you know, enemy propaganda or whatever.
But this is the disconnect between reality and perception management.
KSM and a few of those hijackers of September 11th were veterans of the Bosnia war themselves.
Exactly.
And when people, you know, in the in the alternate media try to warn the mainstream about this back around the time of September 11th and in the aftermath, the mainstream was very adamant that this is Islamophobia, this is, you know, Serbian propaganda, whatever, Croatian propaganda and so on and so forth.
And you basically until you had these people quite literally going over and fighting in Syria and decapitating folks, nobody wanted to hear about them.
So again, I don't think the US is actually singeing its fingers.
I don't think it's recoiling from anything.
I think the political elite in this country, the CFR and the folks that are always in charge of foreign policy, no matter who's officially in the White House, they're perfectly happy with this turn of events, because whether it's war or peace, they're lining their pockets.
And so, yeah, you know, I was I was I was afraid you're going to say that.
Honestly, that's what I thought, too, was, oh, wow, is he saying he thinks that the Americans are starting to pull back from their commitments in Ukraine?
But no, no, if only we were so lucky.
No.
And unfortunately, again, he was much too charitable.
I mean, they did announce that we're not even on track toward one day bringing him into NATO anymore.
Now they're right.
They backed away from even Bush's promise of someday, haven't they?
Well, I mean, that's maybe not much, but it's not.
But you have to look at it from a point of view of if you extend Ukraine and offer of NATO membership, then you you have to live up to your part of the bargain, which is to send in troops and bases.
And that means an open war with Russia.
And it's an open war with Russia in which NATO would clearly be the aggressor.
And the whole point of this maneuvering in this media perception for the past nine months has been trying to convince the United States that And so they can't really do the NATO thing until and unless they manage to provoke an open Russian intervention.
And the Russians, from what I can tell, know better than to give them one.
Yeah, no, you break it, you buy it.
If they wanted to annex Ukraine the way they were hoping for in the beginning, they would have to pay for it.
They can't.
There's no money.
And so they can't really do the NATO thing until and unless they manage to provoke an open Russian intervention.
And so they would much rather have the Europeans and the Russians split the tab of Victoria Nuland's cookies in Maidan, but neither of them is particularly interested.
Well, the Europeans might allow themselves to get wrangled into it because they don't seem to have any will of their own.
But that's a different set of problems.
What I would like to point out, though, is one of the remarks by Putin at the Valdai discussion is something that myself and several of my colleagues in anti-war have been saying for years, which is that usually, in the classical understanding of international relations, you have revisionist powers emerging to challenge whatever order is currently in existence.
This time, and this is very, very notable because this hasn't happened before, the emerging powers, the Russians, the Chinese, the BRICS, and so forth, they're not the revisionist powers.
They're the people who want to who want to preserve status quo.
And it's the self-appointed guardian of the of the existing order of the United States that's destroying it left and right, whereas the so-called revisionist powers are seeking to preserve it.
Yeah, so, you know, Robert Perry at Consortium News has a theory that Victoria Nuland, wife of Robert Kagan, smithers to William Crystal that their agenda is the same as always.
They hate Iran.
And if they can drive a wedge, well, and they and on top of that, or as part of that, I guess, they hate Putin for working with Obama on resolving the Syrian chemical weapons problem a year ago.
So, Nobosa, I wonder what you think of that, that they were willing to provoke this crisis knowing that, you know, America will not, the U.S. government, no matter what they want, is not going to take full responsibility for all Ukraine's debts.
And and, you know, that Obama is not going to take full responsibility for the future Ukraine, as you described.
But that's OK, because if the real mission was just driving a wedge between America and Russia in the midst of a continuing crisis in Syria, and, you know, and, you know, and the possible end of the fake nuclear crisis with Iran, then that's all they need.
And that's all they really care about.
That's a very good theory.
I would say it's probably a little too limited in scope, but there's definitely there are definitely people in the back lines of the government, the folks that are not elected officials, but the bureaucrats, the appointees, the well-connected Washington elite that's essentially using the U.S. government as their private piggy bank of power and money to run their own foreign policy or domestic policy or, you know, economic policy the way they see fit.
And the rest of us are left to pick up the tab that they run up.
And until that's addressed, you know, until these people are forced to take responsibility for their actions and brought to account, I'm afraid that they're just going to keep doing this.
You know, yesterday in Tunis and Egypt, today in Ukraine, tomorrow, who knows where.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I already kept you over time.
I'll let you go.
But thanks very much for your time.
It's great to talk to you again, Nebojsa.
Thanks to have you, Scott.
I really appreciate it.
All right.
So that's Nebojsa Malik.
You can find him at antiwar.com, original.antiwar.com slash Malik, just M-A-L-I-C.
And he'll just go to antiwar.com.
It's right there on the right side of the page.
Hey, I'm Scott Horton here.
It's always safe to say that one should keep at least some of your savings and precious metals as a hedge against inflation.
And if this economy ever does heat back up and the banks start expanding credit, rising prices could make metals a very profitable bet.
Since 1977, Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc. has been helping people buy and sell gold, silver, platinum and palladium.
And they do it well.
They're fast, reliable and trusted for more than 35 years.
And they take Bitcoin.
Call Roberts and Roberts at 1-800-874-9760 or stop by rrbi.co.
Man, you need some Liberty Stickers for the back of your truck.
At libertystickers.com, they've got great state hate, like Pearl Harbor was an inside job.
The Democrats want your guns.
U.S. Army, die for Israel.
Police brutality, not just for black people anymore.
And government school, why you and your kids are so stupid.
Check out these and a thousand other great ones at libertystickers.com.
And of course, they'll take care of all your custom printing for your band or your business at thebumpersticker.com.
That's libertystickers.com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
Hey, I'm Scott here for Whole Food Multicomplete at wholefoodcomplete.com.
Whole Food Multicomplete is an entire supplement program in one bottle, containing 100% RDA of vitamins and minerals, plus live probiotics, digestive enzymes, antioxidant herbs, energy nutrients and more.
It's made in America using real foods and live probiotics.
No chemical synthetics.
It's soy-free, gluten-free and independently tested and verified.
They're so sure you'll love it, they're taking 20% off your first order with coupon code scotthorton.
Satisfaction is guaranteed at wholefoodcomplete.com.
Hey y'all, Scott here.
So you made a little bit of money in this horrid economy only to find that the Fed is more or less outlawed saving.
So into the treacherous waters of the stock market bubble you go.
But how to make a little money without too much risk of losing it all?
Check out wallstreetwindow.com.
Mike Swanson is a successful former hedge fund manager who opens a very real window into his main account, updating his subscribers on the facts of and the reasoning behind all his market moves.
Follow along on paper or with real money and see what happens at wallstreetwindow.com.