04/23/15

Why did Ukraine parliament outlaw Communism and Nazism?

By: Oleg Atbashian | First published in PJ Media
The People’s Cube

On April 9th, after a 24-year delay, the Ukrainian parliament (Rada) has passed a legislation banning communist propaganda along with its symbols, from street names and flags, to monuments and plaques.

The new legislation, passed by 56% of parliamentarians, declares the communist government that ruled Ukraine during the Soviet era a criminal regime that conducted policies of state terror. The ban similarly extends to Nazi propaganda and symbols, even though unlike Communism, Nazism has hardly had any following in a country that was hit hard during WWII and the Nazi occupation.

With urgent and serious problems facing Ukraine’s economy, finances, government reform, and a war with Russia-backed separatists, what was the sudden rush to condemn Nazism and communism simultaneously, given that Nazi Germany and the USSR had collapsed in 1945 and 1991 respectively?

On the surface, bundling together these two antihuman, totalitarian ideologies may seem like a symbolic gesture, but in reality each of them was banned for a very different practical reason, both of them of an existential nature.

Communism 2.0: Russians of the world, unite!

Since the beginning of Ukrainian independence, local communists have remained loyal to Moscow, doing the bidding of the political forces in Russia that sought the restoration of the totalitarian Soviet empire. Protected by the constitution, communist demagoguery has worked as a busy conduit for the Kremlin’s anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western imperial agenda.

The pro-Russian separatists in the self-proclaimed “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk are also driven by a similar imperial agenda they call Russkiy Mir (Pax Russiana), rallying under old Soviet flags, with portraits of Lenin and Stalin in their hands.

Those in the Crimea who cheered Russia’s military takeover of their peninsula were similarly nostalgic of the old USSR and the rule of Stalin’s strong hand; they welcomed Russian troops by carrying red flags, portraits of Soviet leaders, and other communist paraphernalia.

Russia’s state-run media cleverly conflates Soviet nostalgia with being Russian or being part of Pax Russiana. This sentiment, fully supported by Ukrainian communists, was effectively used to start a war that has killed more than 6,000 people since April last year and is still simmering in the eastern regions of Ukraine.

Under these circumstances, a ban on communist propaganda and the condemnation of the USSR as a criminal totalitarian regime serves a very concrete purpose of protecting the nation’s sovereignty and independence at a time of war. In this sense, it functions as a Treason and Sedition Act aimed to disable the Fifth Column which is aiding the foreign enemy from within.

Grassroots de-communization

Most Eastern Bloc and some post-Soviet nations marked their independence with policies of de-communization, cleansing their governments of corrupt officials and dismantling the communist legacies in their cultures and psychology. This worked much to their advantage, strengthening their democratic institutions, transparency, international standing, and ultimately their economies.

That had never happened in Ukraine, let alone Russia. Though de jure an independent nation, Ukraine continued to vegetate in Russia’s shadow, instructed by Russia’s media, and manipulated by Russia’s elites who were interested in keeping Ukraine vulnerable, dependent, and corrupt.

Today’s messy developments in Ukraine are largely the result of belated attempts by this vulnerable, dependent, and corrupt nation to right itself and clean up its act under incessant attacks from behind the fence by the drunken abusive ex who thinks nothing of violating restraining orders and believes he has a sacred right to do so.

Last year, tired of waiting for the government to act, grassroots activists throughout Ukraine undertook a self-styled, anarchic effort at de-communization by throwing corrupt, pro-communist politicians into large garbage bins and posting these videos online.

Their bottled-up, spontaneous outburst also resulted in a massive unauthorized demolition of Lenin monuments all over Ukraine. That only threw more fuel on the smoldering separatist sentiment among the pro-Russian minority in Ukraine, as well as on the already blazing nationalism among a powerful majority in Russia, for whom attacks on communist symbols are no different from attacks against Russia itself.

In the end, communist movements in Ukraine and other Eastern European nations aren’t as much about the Marxist theory as they are about the return of Russia’s domineering role in the region. With the inevitability of a speeding freight train, a restoration of Russia’s dominance will also bring back economic, cultural, and political subjugation, Russification, brain drain, persecution of local nationalism and the implied status of inferior people for all non-Russians.

The fascists of today are called anti-fascists

Kiev’s official condemnation of Nazism serves a very different purpose: it aims to undercut Russia’s grotesquely surreal canard that describes last year’s Maidan Revolution in Kiev as a U.S.-backed fascist coup d’état. Repeated over and over, the Russian media’s portrayal of Ukrainians as Nazis has gone a long way to pit ethnic Russians against the formerly brotherly nation.

In addition to conflating communism with Russian chauvinism, the Kremlin’s propaganda is also effectively using the old Soviet trick of conflating everything that opposes the will of the Kremlin with fascism and Nazism: “Communist Russia has defeated Nazism, therefore anyone who opposes communism or Russia must be a Nazi.”

This obvious logical folly would be laughable if it didn’t continue to shape the minds of many in Russia and beyond, even despite the fact that Russia’s own policies of land grab and national chauvinism almost exactly follow those of Nazi Germany in the years leading to WWII.

Trumped up with the reanimated “Great Patriotic War” rhetoric, the Kremlin’s Goebbels-like propaganda is inspiring thousands of Russian volunteers to cross the border and shoot at imaginary fascists in eastern Ukraine, proving Winston Churchill’s prophetic insight: “The fascists of the future will be called anti-fascists.”

The effects of this mind game aren’t limited to Russia alone. This video, taken recently in Donetsk, shows a self-described American communist (pictured on the left) who volunteered to join the Russian nationalists and kill Ukrainians within the belief that he was being an “anti-fascist.” Like an “A” student during a school test, he diligently recites all the Kremlin-generated talking points: the Ukrainians are Nazis, the fascist coup in Kiev was instigated by the imperialist United States, the war is part of America’s anti-Russian strategy, and other memes he has likely picked up from the English-language RT and similar propaganda channels and websites. Described in the video as a “Texan” but sounding more like a Californian surfer dude, he promises to keep fighting until a complete and unconditional surrender of all fascists (or until he runs out of that stuff he’s smoking, whichever comes first).

In contrast, this Russian-speaking volunteer from Kirghizstan, who had been also been misled by the propaganda on Russian television and arrived in eastern Ukraine on a moral quest to fight “fascists,” eventually became disillusioned and returned home, accompanying the sealed coffins of two fellow Kyrgyz soldiers. “I thought that there were fascists there,” he says in an interview to Radio Liberty, “but I didn’t see any. We fought against the regular Ukrainian Army.” Unlike the English-speaking “Texan” above, he was able to communicate with local residents and captive Ukrainian soldiers. “It turned out that everything was agitation, propaganda,” he concludes. “This was really offensive to me.”

Why now?

On May 9th Russia is going to celebrate Victory Day: the 70th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany to allied forces in World War II (the official Russians term for it is the “Great Patriotic War,” which lasted from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945).

Every Russian government starting with Stalin has habitually attributed all credit for the victory to itself and sometimes to the “unbreakable friendship of Soviet nations united under Russia and guided by the Communist Party and personally by Comrade Stalin.” Faithful to the tradition of utilizing Victory Day as a vehicle for a self-serving political agenda, Russia’s state-run media has already begun to whip up jingoistic fervor in the run-up to the holiday, using victory over Nazism as a launching site for spectacular anti-Ukrainian fireworks.

This year’s Victory Day was meant to be especially bombastic. Every more or less significant world leader had been invited to attend the military parade on Red Square. They were expected to stand side by side with Vladimir Putin, thus reaffirming the Russian (and, by extension, Soviet) military’s leading role in the “struggle for peace,” which would validate Russia’s current policies and show everyone who’s boss.

Putin has once boasted in an interview that, as a chess player, he never makes a political move without calculating several steps ahead. The conflict in Ukraine and the annexation of the Crimea, however, has been nothing but a series of fundamental miscalculations. As a result, all serious heads of state have declined his invitations. The “group of international leaders” on the podium will likely be limited to Third World miscreants hoping to get on Putin’s good side in order to score cheaper oil, weapons, or nuclear technology. The biggest international celebrity will undoubtedly be North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un, who has officially confirmed his appearance.

Until now Ukraine had been slavishly following Russia’s lead in perpetuating Stalinist mythology of the “Great Patriotic War” – a trend jealously enforced by Russia as a symbol of Moscow’s continued sway over the neighboring post-Soviet states. But another new law, adopted in Kiev along with the ban on communist and Nazi propaganda, has broken the old pattern.

From now on, Ukraine will join the rest of the world in marking the end of the war on May 8th, as the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation for Those Who Lost Their Lives during World War II, in 1939-1945. After all, the war came to the western part of Ukraine two years before it came to Russia, after the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact started WWII by splitting Poland in half. What transpired in Ukraine wholly contradicts Russia’s “Great Patriotic War” narrative.

The Nazi smear

The Red Army invasion into well-off western Ukraine (then part of Poland) in September of 1939 brought repressions and deportations, provoking armed resistance on the part of Ukrainian patriots. Upon the advance of the German army in 1941, nationalist groups organized into the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which fought against the Third Reich throughout the Nazi occupation. After the return of the Red Army in 1944 they continued to fight a losing battle against the communists in western Ukraine all the way through the mid-1950s. The Stalinist regime self-servingly described these anti-communist freedom fighters as Nazis – a myth in which most Ukrainians were later forced to believe under the threat of imprisonment, and which is still thoroughly cultivated in Russia.

Today many in Ukraine feel that the UPA fighters must be recognized and remembered along with other WWII heroes and victims. This notion is still being fiercely rejected by most Russians and those Soviet-era Ukrainians who can’t part with the Soviet mythology, believing that the UPA were Nazi collaborators.

The Nazi smear allowed the Soviet communists to keep Ukrainian nationalism in check until the day the USSR collapsed. But Russian state-run TV channels, which continued to be available throughout Ukraine, persisted with the Nazi smear even after the independence, effectively influencing Ukrainian voters in every election cycle by painting pro-Western politicians as neo-Nazis and promoting Moscow-backed politicians, one of whom was the ousted president Viktor Yanukovych.

Thus, Russia’s current allegation that the 2014 revolution in Ukraine was a Nazi coup orchestrated by the CIA and the U.S. State Department is not a new invention, but merely a modern-day remake of the hoary propagandistic myth started 70 years ago by Stalin.

Accordingly, Ukrainian parliament’s official condemnation of Nazism was clearly an attempt to put that damaging Stalinist narrative to rest.

In an effort to replace the old Soviet symbolism with a new one, on April 7th Ukraine’s First Lady Maryna Poroshenko attended a “Remembrance Poppy” event marking the anniversary of the Nazi surrender.

Since many older people may still want to follow the old Victory Day tradition on May 9th, the holiday will remain, but the phrase “the Great Patriotic War” will now be replaced by “World War II.” Given that most Red Army veterans in Ukraine will likely parade with their Soviet medals in violation of the ban on communist symbols, enforcing the new law may put the government in an uncomfortable position. Perhaps the police will be advised to turn a blind eye; we’ll have to wait and see.

As part of Russia’s angry response to this legislation, its Foreign Ministry representative Konstantin Dolgov, endowed with an Orwellian title “Commissioner for Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law,” called Ukraine’s ban on communist ideology a “cynical move,” which violates international obligations by depriving many of its citizens their legal rights. The E.U. and the U.S. should no longer ignore this,” he wrote on his Twitter blog. The diplomat ended his statement on a surreal note, saying that a law that equates communism and Nazism somehow “reveals Kiev’s depraved unwillingness to break with the neo-Nazis.”

The Russian social media’s reaction is a lot more vocal but a lot less quotable. In the minds of pro-Putin patriots, the world outside of Russia’s borders is populated entirely by virulent Russophobes whose only purpose in life is to hurt Russia out of sheer hatred for Russia’s big heart and spirituality. But, like a broken clock that shows the correct hour twice daily, this time they get it right: Ukraine’s ban on both communist and Nazi propaganda is directed, quite deservedly, against Russia with its Orwellian policies.

02/7/15

Christian horses found too high

By: Olga Photoshopova
The People’s Cube

Uppity Christian horsemen from the Crusades are still
trampling modern-day Muslim pacifists.

As everyone knows, the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington is a yearly event designed to put Christians in their place and advance Islam as the national religion. At today’s breakfast, President Obama once again met the expectations of the progressive movement by telling off those uppity Christians like a true Muslim would:

“Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Indeed, in these dark times of Christian Extremism, what we need is a president who can inform the world about all of the Christian atrocities throughout history for which currently living Americans are personally responsible. Having effectively airbrushed “Islamic Extremism” from the lexicon, Obama completed his sermon with a prayer towards Mecca.

Christians are hereby instructed to remove incorrect pages from their Bibles and replace them with the following corrected transcript of Jesus’ words: “Thou shalt murder gays; thou shalt enslave minorities; thou shalt bomb women and children.”

Since there isn’t an equivalent in the Quran of anything so hateful as this corrected version of Biblical history, Christians need to get off their high horses and admit that Jesus had personally instigated terrible atrocities, as proven by the Crusades and the Inquisition.

As if that weren’t enough, Jesus had the audacity to die but not stay dead, to walk around alive and kicking for forty more days, and then to fly up to heaven. Such antisocial behavior allowed Christians to start getting uppity around 33 A.D., which still continues unabated to this day.

The science is settled: there are no Islamic Extremists anywhere on Earth because President Obama has never uttered the words. Christians, on the other hand, are committing terrible atrocities daily, taking hostages, cutting off heads, blowing themselves up in public places, burning people alive, and otherwise terrorizing the peaceful and rapidly diminishing Muslim community. No verification of these facts is required simply because Obama is a genius who would never tell a lie.

President Obama is seen modeling a People-approved low-horse for those who are barely Christians, pretending to be Christians, or embarrassed by Christianity.
(Photo Credit: blurbrain.com)

It is known that President Ronald Reagan liked to ride horses – all of them high – for which he is revered among Christian Extremists. He was once even injured in a fall from his high horse. Let that be a lesson to all Christians to get off their high horses and stay off.

President Reagan’s horse was so high that in order to fit it into his Presidential Library, workers had to chop off its legs. This picture gives a whole new meaning to “Reagan’s quarterhorse.” Too high a horse would not be a humble memorial for a Christian anyway.

Here, President Reagan is seen assisting his wife Nancy off of her high horse.

In view of the above, our scientists at the People’s Cube Karl Marx Treatment Center have developed recommendations on how to get Christians off their high horses efficiently: hack off the high horse’s legs or replace them with miniature low horses.

A standard horse owned by a Christian should be no taller than 36 inches. All horse-riding Christians will be subject to measuring with a pole similar to those used on amusement park rides.

This Christian got off her high horse, and the world is a lot better off.

Compliance with these measures is expected to level the playing field, bringing Christians closer to the ground where the peaceful Muslim crowd congregates.

And finally, as we discussed the subject of Christian high horses at our latest meeting, we received a few questions from confused members of the audience. People wanted to know whether the horse in question was a Christian, what exactly the definition of “high” was, and what if President Obama really meant to say that the horse was high from marijuana and the Christian should get off to avoid contact.

We will make sure to ask the White House spokesperson, Josh Earnest, for clarification on what the President really meant. Until then, the debate gallops on.

This Christian white male needs to get off his high horse. It’s offensive to Muslims.

01/14/15

Top Ten Things That will Happen in 2015

The People’s Cube

Red Square

* * *

It has become our New Year tradition to team up with Will Beria, our Listmaster of Things that Didn’t Happen, and make an official statement. See our lists for the years of 2012 and 2013.

This time, however, instead of a summary of things that didn’t happen in the past year, we are offering a list of Top Ten Things To Come in the coming year.

1. Recovery will reach escape velocity and escape the economy altogether
2. All executive orders will be declared constitutional by executive order
3. Robert Kennedy Jr. will apologize for being white and male, blaming his parents
4. The New York Times will cut operating costs by replacing fact-checkers with rubber stamp
5. A Harvard professor will find evidence proving evidence proves nothing
6. City of San Francisco will be leveled because steep hills made it handicap inaccessible
7. Nobel-winning economists will admit bafflement that deficit keeps growing despite increased government spending
8. Last Baby Boomer will go kicking and screaming into his 60s; generation will be renamed ‘Crybaby Boomers’
9. Congress will stand up to Wall Street; bankers will take their seats
10. Sesame Street will sue Letter ‘S’ for monopolizing both plural and possessive nouns

In more News From the Future:

A Supreme Court decision in “Fabian and Fabian versus America” will result in a declaration that naming governmental entities (cities, states, etc.) or taxpayer-supported institutions after Christian saints or personages is in violation of the separation of church and state. Additionally, using for this purpose the name of a Caucasian and/or male is declared racist and/or sexist in violation of the equal protection clause and/or something in the Constitution the Supreme Court will defer explaining to the future.

In light of the decision, San Francisco will revert to Yerba Buena and the City of Angels, Los Angeles, will become Los Humanas. The state of Pennsylvania will become the all-inclusive Pansylvania, Pittsburgh will become Peoplesburgh, and Philadelphia, City of Brotherly Love, will be rechristened renamed Philatransgendoria. St. Louis will become Middleopolis. Their pro sports teams will follow suit: the Rams will become the gender-neutral Middleopolis Sheep, and the Cardinals will become the Laypersons.

The USA itself will drop the connection to Amerigo Vespucci and become the USNC, United States of North Continenta. Disassociating from Columbus and Washington, the capitol will be renamed Omnicity, District of Potomaca. The NFL franchise will follow suit, becoming the Omnicity Redskins.

01/12/15

Sexy wartime pinups are back in style – this time in Ukraine

The People’s Cube

Red Square

Sexy American pinups of the ’40s and ’50s take a special place in the hearts of post-Soviet artists. When pinups were on the rise in the States, the Soviet government had decisively excluded such “bourgeois decadence” from the culture of the builders of communism. Instead, Soviet men were encouraged to rest their eyes on the portraits of exemplary workers and collective farmers who happened to be women, painted in the tradition of socialist realism.

Today, feeling nostalgic for that which never was, artists in different parts of the former USSR are trying to reconstruct the missing link in their cultural evolution – either by drawing a series of clever mashups, mixing vintage American pinup girls with Soviet propaganda posters, or by visualizing scantily clad retro-babes in classic pin-up poses but with Soviet enthusiastic fire in their eyes, who can only exist in an imaginary alternative timeline, in which the Soviet government hadn’t been so zealous in suppressing the sexuality of its citizens.

And today, Ukrainian graphic artist Sviatoslav Pashchuk is bringing back military-styled pinups – after all, it was during World War II that the pinup culture was born originally, satisfying the need of American GIs to gaze at creatures of beauty in the midst of cruel wartime brutality.

Now that a brutal war is raging in the east of Ukraine, the new series is quickly becoming a hot item among Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers, who are defending their country against the Russian aggression. The guys are grateful to the artist for the diversion. They get the reference, admitting that this patriotic erotica is even sweeter to their eyes than it was to the American GIs during WWII. These pinups are also a reminder of the bigger world they had left behind and to which they hope to return after the war is over. Alas, not all of them will.

Each pinup is dedicated to a different branch of armed service or a volunteer battalion, accompanied by humorous and often rhymed patriotic slogans, with a warning at the bottom in fine print: “separatism is dangerous to your health.”

The artist is offering them for sale with the understanding that part of the proceeds will go to support the Ukrainian military. Since this is not a real commercial operation, the only way to order them for now is by sending him an email at [email protected].

UPDATE:

Last night I contacted this Ukrainian artist via Facebook, sending him a link to the Cube and some additional questions. When I woke up I already had his responses (the time difference is seven hours). Here’s what he wrote:

Sviatoslav Pashchuk: Good day to you! We are already sending our posters to American buyers and soon we will also have a special website, it’s almost done now. I’m also going to make English-language versions for the American market.

You are correct – all money from the sales will go to help our soldiers. Most of the proceeds will be used to buy sniper equipment and ammunition for volunteer fighters. Thank you very much for the promotion.

I’m going to continue with this series, making as many as 12 posters. The site will have a link to the blog where I’ll keep the readers updated on my coming creations.

* * *

See the seven existing posters below:

Donbas Volunteer Battalion: Goodies For The Bullies

~
Special Forces: Fatal Dating

Artillery: The Final Lullaby
(The stenciled acronym on the howitzer stands for “F-U Putin”)

Air Force: A Hot Nosedive

Border Patrol: The Hunter Instinct

Aydar Volunteer Battalion: Our Kind of Happy

Ukrainian National Guard: Gentle Ukrainization

01/10/15

People’s Cube commissars stage mock show trial in Ferguson

The People’s Cube

Red Square
1/9/2015, 9:06 pm

Actually, these comrades in Soviet army hats are not really members of the People’s Cube, nor have they ever been. Instead, this is the most acute case of “life imitating the People’s Cube” we’ve seen so far, especially that it happened almost simultaneously with our very own scheduled Show Trial and Raffle.

A few days ago, on January 5th, in St. Louis, Mo, a group of comrades wearing Russian fur hats with Red Army insignia (complete with red stars and hammer’n’sickles) held a People’s Grand Jury, with live broadcast, in which they unanimously denounced the State Prosecutor for being the imperialist running pig-dog, and, after one hour of selective and one-sided debate found the kriminal kop Darren Wilson guilty on all trumped-up charges.

“Black People’s Grand Jury” indicts Officer Darren Wilson

Obviously, members of the mock show trial are now in need of mock NKVD officers to escort the convicted enemy of the people to the mock Siberian gulag – or, better yet, stage a mock firing squad.

All is well behind the Irony Curtain, comrades!

01/6/15

HarperCollins Revisionist History and Geography Series

The People’s Cube

Red Square

Dedicated to HarperCollins, which recently published atlases scrubbed of the existence of the state of Israel, so as not to hurt the feelings of its Middle East customers. Reported by our friend and frequent contributor, Marion D.S. Dreyfus. Illustrated by Red Square, People’s Director.

Harper's Revisionist History and Geography

Hey, kids, who said History and Geography have to hurt? See how much cooler, more fashionable, and less painful they can be with Harper’s new textbook series, where every fact and location have been revised, updated and revisited. Just try these on for size!

* * *
Al Jazeera HQ have now inched across the continent to Vienna, closer to the station’s European audiences, in the hundreds of millions. Of course, Vienna has been the mighty capital of the Austro-Hungarian Caliphate since 1683, after the army of the Ottoman Empire and its fiefdoms commanded by Grand Vizier Mustafa Pasha liberated the city from the infidel occupiers who spoke in some gibberish, now-forgotten dialect. Vienna was chosen over the Islamic Republic of al-Andalus (known as Spain prior to 711 CE) due to superior in-house plumbing and more obedient servants.

Kim Jong Il, still ill, hands over the North Korean barrens to his daughter, Kim Jong Kimberly, a pretty little thing also fond of basketball. She is engaged to an American athlete, Dennis Rodman, who has just left the bedside of his former fiancée, Justina Bieber.

President Ted Cruz recently jailed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for crimes linked to Benghazi, along with an unspecified number of co-conspirators involved in the ambassadorial conflagration and deaths of many American servicemen and diplomatic corps. Her dresser and fashion consultant, Huma Abedin, was given special dispensation to visit Ms. Clinton, a widow, incarcerated as much for style abuses as incompetence in office. She has sort of renounced her Muslim Brotherhood linkage. Time will tell. (Kidding.)

The Antarctic, now in the bearish sphere of USSR influence, has been declared a Nyet-Go zone, as the Soviets under the leadership of General Secretary Leonid Putin extract minerals and precious commodities from the icy substrate, thereby increasing their country’s output to more than just oil, vodka and wooden nested dolls, to include permafrost yields.

The bastard child of Stanley Ann Dunham, a multi-married amateur anthropologist and former pornographer’s model for a petty Communist drug seller cum photographer in Chicago, was successfully aborted, following the opportune 1961 Roe v. Wade court decision. Ms. Dunham married a local boy, moved to Tallahassee, and began teaching Secret Byways of the Middle East, having instead of her first abortee tissue-waste two others, both Caucasian, moderate socialists in good standing, dabbling in comic-book culture. Both have purchased but rejected the annals of radicalism peddled by one Saul Alinsky, who piddled out before his little book gained much traction.

Saddam Hussein, still living large in his capacious palace in Baghdad, has genially handed the reins of his Iraqi domain to paradigms-in-chief, Cusay and Uday, for managerial continuity. The Hussein brothers appear often in the backrooms of clubs, dragging attractive young wives of other men into their lairs for a touch of R&R (rape and recuperation). Iraq continues its long, slow smolder as it is kept in check by the Hussein brothers.

The war in the disputed Falklands, waged by the British under PM Margaret Thatcher, assisted by an aged Winnie Churchill well past his sell-by date, was lost to the Argentineans, and the Brits turned tail and went back, frigates between their navy, to the Emerald Isle–but without their legendary millennial mini-territory. The islands are now dubbed the Malvinas everywhere, including the British texts taught to the largely Wahhabist students of the UK.

Sen. Edward Kennedy succeeded in re-election after he saved Mary Jo Kopechne from his sinking Oldsmobile following a senatorial after-hours carouse with senate aides attended by all-female secretaries and all-male Senate staffers. Kennedy is happily ensconced in a retirement home in Boca, frequently entertaining his playboy nephew, William Kennedy Jones, who is occasionally up to his old tricks, climbing trees as a prank, peering into women’s dorms. Hyannis, the longtime Kennedy family preserve, is now in the possession of Steve Jobs, still going strong in his creative electronics mold, though considerably poorer, given the failure of his pet computer innovations of the ’90s and ’00s.

Ahmadinejad, the little sad grocer in Tehran, is said to be becoming expert in the mystic arts of Hom’s exotic carpet weaving. His silken output commands fees in excess of $10,000 for a room-sized floor covering. Guaranteed to last. Diplomats to Iran’s peaceable kingdom are as usual enjoying the embassy, with its luxe pools and amenities.Having won the war, Japan has instituted mandatory Kan’ji calligraphy coursework in all secondary schools, with lunchrooms across the land featuring sushi, wasabi, and soy sauce with modified sodium. The Deutsche curricula have been suspended for the past 60 years, as the Midnight Sun emperor decided German was too taxing on the throat and vocal chords of most speakers. And since the Japanese beat all the rest of the armies in 1949, Germans and Germanica were dispensable.

The State of Israel, a never-was, has been economically excised from the atlases of Harper/Creations, to suit the mindset and offsets of their clients in the Middle East, from Sea to Bloody Sea. Funded by the recent great gas and oil finds in the Mediterranean, named al-Leviathan and al-Tamarisk, they have money to burn, among other things. Jordan, peaceful Syria, and Mahmoud Abash are currently running a quiet casino of Mafia-like accountability and incautious income. Palestinian marginals are still dispersed and hanging in with UNRWA in 57 Muslim countries. All are invited into the Magic Kingdom. C’mon down, and shukran, y’all.

Marion D.S. Dreyfus | Illustrations by Red Square, People’s Director

12/31/14

Russia denies shooting down Santa, blames U.S. propaganda

The People’s Cube
By Oleg Atbashian | First published in the American Thinker

This isn’t satire and I’m not making this up. When an obscure American satirical blog, The Daily Currant, posted a funny spoof titled, Russia Shoots Down Santa’s Sleigh Near North Pole, the story quickly became viral on the Russian Internet thanks to the Russian-language version of the RT website, which translated several excerpts and posted them with some editorial comments.

This is where the “life imitates satire” part begins. While everyone realized this was a joke, many Russian readers, swept by the current wave of militant nationalism, turned the comment sections of blogs and news websites into an anti-American hate-fest, gloating over Santa’s death, praising Russia’s military, disparaging Western consumerism, and wishing that Western leaders attending Santa’s funeral on the North Pole would drown along with St. Nick’s dead body. Some even expressed concern that certain nitwits out there may think the story is real and will draw incorrect conclusions about Russia’s peaceful policies. All of them unwittingly proved the point of the Daily Currant’s satire:

Several ultra-nationalist politicians in Moscow have praised the downing, which targeted a popular Western celebrity. “Santa Claus is a symbol of Western decadence and consumerism,” said Alexei Onnatopp, leader of the far-right Golden Bear party. “Whoever killed this fat, corrupt man is a patriot and a hero.”

But it gets curioser. Some serious publications, such as the Moscow-based business daily Vzglyad (Viewpoint) and the National Defense magazine, added to the controversy by describing this satire as vicious imperialist propaganda, unleashed by the U.S. government against Russia and its glorious president, Vladimir Putin.

Below is my somewhat shortened translation of the article from Vzglyad, which is chillingly reminiscent of the Pravda editorials of the Cold War era.

Foreign jokesters reported the sensational news: Russian military has allegedly destroyed the sleigh of Santa Claus over the Arctic Ocean, on his way to deliver gifts. Jokes aside, experts believe that this story draws an analogy with the real tragedy of the downed Boeing over Ukraine and the world’s reaction to it. They see this “news” as yet another wave of attacks in the information campaign organized by the West against Russia.

American satirical blog The Daily Currant reported that Russia’s Air Defense shot down Santa’s sleigh over the Arctic Ocean, with a missile launched from the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.

According to the source, fragments of the sled were allegedly found in Arctic waters by a “Norwegian fisherman.” He said that Santa and most of his reindeer have died, except for the famous Rudolph, who was quickly identified by the red nose, reports RT.

“Although Russia has officially denied involvement in the incident, U.S. intelligence forces say they have proof the missile was fired from a Russian military installation on the island,” the joke goes on. “Several ultra-nationalist politicians in Moscow have praised the downing, which targeted a popular Western celebrity.”

Washington, meanwhile, vowed an “appropriate response to the tragedy,” the article says. President Barack Obama, in particular, promised the tightening of sanctions against Moscow. “Vladimir Putin has threatened the hopes and dreams of children around the world. He will be brought to justice,” the website quotes the American president.

Yet another provocation

According to the editor-in-chief of the National Defense magazine, Igor Korotchenko, we can laugh at this “news,” but we can also draw some disturbing conclusions.

“This is just more of the same information war that is being waged against our country,” he said. “Santa’s flight is of an entirely virtual nature, it is modeled on NORAD computers, and no one ever actually observes any flying objects. This is to some extent a tribute to the Western New Year’s culture.”

“As for the sensationalist news that the Russians have shot someone down over the North Pole – and not just anyone, but Santa Claus’s sleigh… This is another attempt to continue with the devious smear campaign, to reinforce in the heads of the narrow-minded Westerners the previously disseminated lie that it was Russia’s fault that the Malaysian Boeing had been shot down over Ukraine. What they’re telling us is this: look, Russians are now so brutal, they’re even shooting down Santa Claus,” added Korochenko.

According to him, not everyone will see this as a joke. “For some people in the West who are ignorant of certain technical subtleties, for those children who believe in Santa Claus, this news undermines their New Year expectations (the speaker once again confuses the New Year with Christmas – O.A.). That is, there is an ongoing effort to demonize Russia by means of such vulgar and repugnant injections of manufactured information,” said the head of the National Defense magazine.

He also commented in jest that Russia’s Aerospace Defense would surely “provide Santa Claus and his escort the necessary corridor and would not only shoot it down, but would give it the green light all the way.”

The military expert also advised that the (American) authors of the jocular provocation should see a psychiatrist and “check themselves for certain phobias that make them look bad.”

I kid you not. The article further recalls the crash of the Malaysian Boeing-777 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, which killed 298 people on board. This is followed by an obligatory recitation of “alternative” versions of events and conspiracy theories that have since been disseminated by Russia’s state-run news agencies, ending with blaming the U.S. and other Western governments of immediately “using this tragedy in their information war against Russia,” citing such “notorious warmongers” as Obama and Biden.

“By the way,” writes Vzglyad, “we would be interested in hearing the comments about the Santa’s sled ‘downed’ over the Russian Arctic from certain representatives of the U.S. government, such as, the spokesperson for the Department of State, Jen Psaki. Will she also lay the responsibility on Moscow? And in how many hours after the ‘tragedy’?”

It remains unclear if the quoted Russian journalists seriously believe that Barack Obama’s government had orchestrated The Daily Currant’s satire, or they are simply throwing out clues for inflamed minds to connect the dots. In any event, such simultaneously parochial and angry articles have lately become more of a rule than an exception in Russia, inadvertently illustrating the pitiful intellectual and moral condition to which the official media and about 80% of its audiences have been reduced to by Putin’s “postmodern” dictatorship.

Having grown up in the USSR and seeing the workings of the Soviet propaganda first-hand, I used to attribute the success of the centralized, state-sponsored ideological brainwashing to the lack of competition. The unholy trinity of the Party, the State, and the KGB had conveniently blocked all outside sources of information, enjoying an absolute, 70-year-long propaganda monopoly in the media, culture, and education.

But today’s success of Putin’s propaganda machine operating in the open information space has put that idea to rest.

It’s important to realize that to a Soviet citizen, “propaganda” was not a derogatory term, but rather an inevitable default setting of the Cold War reality. The so-called “Propaganda Departments” officially functioned in the open, disseminating “correct” opinions about various events happening domestically and internationally, to be repeated by the Soviet media and internalized by the population. Thus propaganda was generally accepted as an essential, even vital part of life: our “good” propaganda was necessary to immunize us from their “evil” propaganda.

My generation grew up believing that we were surrounded by deadly imperialist enemies, whose capitalist media, motivated by hatred and money, conducted a planned, centralized, state-sponsored ideological brainwashing of their own populations, in addition to manufacturing anti-Soviet propaganda for distribution inside the USSR.

Years later, it took a lot of effort on my part to dismantle, metaphorically speaking, the intricate system of curved mirrors and screens that had been installed in our heads by the “benevolent” propaganda with our own consent. In our defense, we didn’t know better at the time. What’s this generation’s excuse? And what causes a sizeable number of people in the West to fall for the propaganda coming out of the Kremlin today?

A Western reader must also realize that in modern Russia the term “propaganda” has outlived its usefulness and has been replaced with a more comprehensive term, “political technologies.” “Political technologies” is a science of massive mind manipulation that has been perfected in Russia to a state of art – dark art, to be sure – involving politics, sociology, psychology, public relations, marketing, advertising, as well as a great deal of cynicism and corruption. In comparison, Barack Obama’s election campaigns, OFA, Acorn, and Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals are mere child’s play.

And, just as erstwhile Propaganda Departments, modern Russia’s “political technologists” operate in the open, protected by the general acceptance of a planted notion that the rest of the world also lives by these rules: “everyone is doing it, and if it’s our political technologists against theirs, we’ll be better off sticking with ours.”

The 19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire once said, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.” That is, indeed, a great trick, but hardly the greatest. The devil’s even greater and, therefore, less known trick, was to convince the world that God is just as much of an evil, corrupt, and conniving trickster as he is, if not worse. The acceptance that both sides are morally equal has allowed the devil to stop living incognito, get out into the big wide world, start a legitimate business, print out business cards with his real name and contact information, put his face on a billboard, and make a good living by consulting the Russian government.

If truth and justice are nowhere to be found and every political system is equally evil and corrupt, the only way to survive it is to stick to your own kind, right or wrong. Hence, the fervent nationalism and xenophobia that are sweeping Putin’s Russia, now officially endorsed by the President and blessed by the corrupt Russian Orthodox Church.

Perhaps, the most effective and harmful “curved mirror” that had been planted in the minds of the Russian public since the times of the previous Cold War was the idea that nothing happens in the Western world outside the control of the “capitalist ruling class,” and that everything that gets written or published in the Western media has been carefully orchestrated by the powers to be.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Western “ruling classes” in this picture are indistinguishable from Russia’s ruling classes except for the foreign, harder-to-pronounce names – and now they even get their suits made by the same fashion designers.

Living in a non-Western totalitarian country with state-run media, it’s easy to believe that American and European “imperialists” are likewise running a well-oiled, state-run, and centrally operated propaganda machine that manufactures and distributes cynical disinformation. Such a perception affects even those Russians who are sympathetic towards America and Europe, distorting their judgment of events – let alone those with an aversion to all things Western.

By convincing people that “the enemy” is engaging in the same kind of propaganda and disinformation as the domestic state-run media does, Putin’s “political technologists” have as much as cloned the Iron Curtain, placing its small replicas in millions of individual heads. The individual, portable Iron Curtain works even better than the former big one that encircled the entire country: it effectively captures and filters out any “undesirable” information even if the carrier speaks English, watches Fox News, browses the World-Wide Web, or travels overseas.

Not only is the Kremlin pulling this trick domestically – for the longest time it has been exporting this thoroughly foreign idea to the Western world, where it already has taken root and blossomed in perverse imaginations of conspiracy theorists (World Trade Center, Kennedy assassination, etc.), as well as various leftist intellectuals in the media, Hollywood, and academia.

Some of my American friends will argue that the Western media is indeed a well-oiled, centrally operated propaganda machine – except that it is controlled, not so much by the capitalists as by their opponents on the international Left. I’d say those are apples and oranges. But whatever the case, it is ridiculous to suggest that The Daily Currant is controlled from the same bunker as The New York Times.

The notion that nothing in the West happens outside the control of the ruling class is, of course, a forced projection on the part of “projectionists” – previously of the Soviet totalitarianism and now of the so-called “postmodern” or “soft” totalitarianism as it exists in Russia today.

Such projections are usually effective in destroying and demoralizing the opponent, but they also have a weak spot. The projected picture can give us a good preview of what the “projectionists” are up to themselves. In this case, the plans and the mindset of Putin’s political technologists are clearly visible in the talking points and the choice of words of the above media and defense “experts”:

…Ongoing effort to demonize Russia… Vulgar and repugnant injections of manufactured information… Devious smear campaign, to reinforce in the heads of the narrow-minded Westerners the previously disseminated lie… Information campaign organized by the West against Russia… Yet another provocation… More of the same information war that is being waged against our country…

Quite some time ago I have discovered a rule that is being proven over and over by current events: the dark image of the “evil and corrupt” Western societies that the Kremlin rulers have always painted to the world is, in fact, precisely the dystopia we would all have lived in had the same rulers taken over the world.

The latest example is the eastern Ukraine. First, the Kremlin uses its subservient media to “zombify” many Russians, as well as some sympathetic Ukrainians and Westerners, into believing that the recent Ukrainian revolution was engineered and paid for by the U.S. government according to a widely publicized but a completely paranoid, manufactured scenario. Next, the Kremlin itself enacts exactly the same scenario in the Crimea and the eastern regions of Ukraine, saying that if the Americans could pull it off, so can the Russians, and be entirely justified in doing so. Right away, a host of FSB, SVR, and GRU agents infiltrate Ukraine to stage a “popular” uprising against the Ukrainian “junta” – an uprising that wouldn’t last a day without the Kremlin’s money, weapons, military intelligence, and the non-stop media propaganda.

The result is two self-proclaimed “people’s republics” called DPR and LPR – or, rather, two devastated, impoverished, angry, and crime-ridden quasi-socialist dystopias ruled by rival military gangs, with no hope for the future and no signs of healing in sight. The Crimea was spared the war due to a quick annexation by Russia, but the situation there isn’t much better.

The previous Cold War was fought not just on the proxy battlefields of the Third World; a much bigger and a more important fight was happening on the information battlefield worldwide – a battlefield of perceptions that was conceived, designed, and almost entirely controlled by the Kremlin. That was how America lost Vietnam – not to the North Vietnamese Army, but to the Soviet propaganda machine operating in the West.

Make no mistake, Putin has already started a new Cold War against the United States, fighting it with the same methods and using the same networks he inherited from the old KGB, which he himself used to be a part of. It’s time America stopped pretending this isn’t happening and began to fight back.

12/30/14

Russian Nativity Play: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph Stalin

The People’s Cube
Red Square

What happens to a Christmas play when Joseph Stalin is more known than the biblical Joseph.

First published in Front Page Magazine
by Oleg Atbashian

This “life imitates the People’s Cube” moment comes from St. Petersburg, Russia. What seems to be a spoof is a legitimate story via RIA Novosti, a Russian news agency. As a historical footnote, Nativity plays are a new concept in Russia, where Joseph Stalin is better known than the biblical Joseph, which occasionally causes Freudian slips like the one below.

A St. Petersburg student mistakenly showed up dressed as Joseph Stalin to the Christmas play where he was supposed to play the biblical character of Joseph.

“Yesterday, my 12-year-old son participated in a school play. He told us ahead of time that he got the role of Joseph Stalin who is talking to some woman. It wasn’t a big surprise to us, as he has played parts in school plays before, and once he was even a watermelon,” wrote the student’s father Fyodor Gavrichenko on his Facebook page.

Gavrichenko said the whole family worked on making the costume – especially the grandmother, who sewed trouser stripes to the pants, found some old army boots, made a generalissimo mustache and a red folder with a big star.

They didn’t realize the mistake until the last moment because the play was in German as part of the boy’s foreign language class, and no one understood what the son’s lines meant. Apparently, the boy hadn’t been paying attention in class either. Instead of bringing the costume to school before the play, he showed the teacher its picture on his cell phone. The teacher thought it was a joke and said that the costume “rocks.”

The family sensed trouble when they saw their son’s classmate dressed as Magi. “Who are you?” asked the Magi. “I’m Mary’s husband… Joseph Stalin,” said the boy. His confidence shaken, the classmate went to the teacher: “Our Joseph turns out to be Stalin… Is that a good thing?” “What?” asked the teacher, as he pulled the curtain revealing the Nativity scene with Joseph and Mary. It was too late to change.

The plot thickened before the drama began. According to the father, Stalin’s outfit was a smash. The boy’s lines were accompanied by fits of hysterical laughter through the tears from other parents, some of whom reportedly fell off their chairs.

Those who can read the original Facebook post in Russian will notice that the father knows as little about the Nativity story as his son, confusing characters and their roles in the story. This is rather a norm in Russia, where erstwhile official atheism is only now being replaced by the official Orthodox Church. This St. Petersburg family couldn’t tell the shepherds from angels even if their son’s play weren’t in German. But at least they’re trying.

12/13/14

Feinstein ‘Torture Report’ outs C. Martel as Islamophobe

By: Komissar al-Blogunov
The People’s Cube

Diane Feinstein’s recently released report on controversial CIA interrogation practices indicts, not only the Bush administration, but also all previous administrations going back to the controversial leader of the Franks, Charles Martel, and his victory over the moderate Muslim community at Tours in 732 AD, which can only be described as a gross law enforcement misconduct and hate crime.

Citing inside information from medieval Latin and Arabic sources, the report prepared by Feinstein’s staffers details a shocking degree of intolerance and Islamophobia on the part of Charles Martel’s administration and the army of Franks, who countered the peaceful expansion of moderate Muslims into Europe via Spain with such violent hatred that historians suspect could only be explained by racist motives.

“Clearly this was racial profiling on part of the Frankish administration,” determined Yale historian Dr. Hussein al-Isis. “Franks and other white Europeans were simply uncomfortable around brown Middle Easterners, no matter how harmless their intentions.”

While mostly white contemporary historians crowed about a “Christian victory over Islam,” understandably bitter and disaffected members of the Muslim community, victimized by Martel’s extremist policies, were compelled to fend for themselves while retreating through the Pyrenees shouting, “Hands up, don’t spear me!” and “Death to Infidels!” Through no fault of their own, villages were plundered and citizens killed by some of the elements within the otherwise peaceful group of Muslim protesters, who became radicalized as a result of racism and gross civil right violations.

“I was disgusted at what we uncovered,” said an indignant Senator Diane Feinstein. “Instead of empathizing with the Muslim community and hearing their side of the story – instead of trying to find common ground and a mutually acceptable compromise through interfaith dialogue and negotiations, the bigoted leader of Franks chose to kill the Muslim leader, Abdul Rahman al-Ghafiqi.”

“For this sickening display of barbarism,” added Feinstein, “he received the nickname of Martel, meaning ‘the Hammer,’ and has continued to symbolize the greatest threat to world peace and harmony until his title “the Hammer” was passed to the Republican leader Tom Delay.

“We have only ourselves to blame for this mess,” opined foreign policy expert and former presidential candidate, Ron Paul. “If Martel had not unilaterally meddled in Middle Eastern affairs, then there wouldn’t have been any of that blowback. The fact that Islam was spreading by violent conquest a century before the Battle of Tours is a direct result of Martel’s misguided foreign adventures.”

At a White House press conference, President Obama informed reporters that “I just found out about the Battle of Tours while watching History Channel, and let me tell you, nobody is angrier about this than I am. I have asked our outgoing attorney general, Eric Holder, to immediately investigate Martel’s activities, to get to the bottom of this issue, and if possible, to take legal action against Charles Martel and the Frankish Kingdom. We will not rest until we have a conviction.”

Nevertheless, the president did appeal for restraint. “As you protest, you’re probably thinking like I’m thinking: this is the result of over a millennia of documentable Islamophobia. You know, this touches me on a personal level: Abdul Rahman al-Ghafiqi looks just like Michelle with a beard. This isn’t just a Shia problem, or a Sunni problem, or a Sufi problem, it’s an American problem. While I understand the rage, the calls for Jihad, the desire to impale all white Christians and burn down their churches, let’s everybody stay calm and let social justice take its course.”

Meanwhile, protesters holding posters of al-Ghafiqi were blocking major highways in large cities across America, and NFL players were seen charging onto the field, then collapsing and shouting, “Hands up, don’t spear me!”