No chickens in Kiev

Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, 24 November 2004 13:07.

The world is watching Ukraine. In Kiev and in all the cities across that 75% of the country which is Ukrainian-speaking the rights of the electoral majority are being asserted. The only question would seem to be whether peaceful protest will be enough to dislodge Viktor Yanukovich.

It is not certain that it will. The results of Sunday’s run-off are to be officially announced today. If Yanukovich is declared the winner, as he has insisted he was, a highly unpredictable trial of strength will ensue. Yanukovich has powerful friends, among them State President Leonid Kuchma (who in 2001 was embroiled in the extraordinary scandal of the disappearance and gruesome decapitation of an opposition journalist, Georgyi “George” Gongadze). Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is another, and has already welcomed Yanukovich’s self-declared victory.

The great unknown was the position of the army, security services and the police force. Only the Defence Ministry was thought to be definitely loyal to the President. But this morning Defense Minister Oleksander Kuzmuk has declared neutrality.

The subtext of the election is ethnicity and geopolitics, presented as a struggle between a classical power elite and reformists. After the demise of the Soviet Union, power in the country was reconnected with the Russian-speaking elite in the east. About 20% of Ukraine’s population is Russian-speaking. Naturally, they look eastward to the Motherland. Yushchenko’s supporters, described as nationalists in the Mosnews link, look west and to a future in the EU. He has already been ejected from the office of Prime Minister once, on 26th April 2001. If he succeeds to the Presidency this time it is difficult to believe that reform will be thwarted a second time.

It is, however, worth re-stating what kind of people Yushchenko and his supporters are fighting. In the words of Freedom House:-

Ukraine’s election campaign was marked by the denial of media access to democratic opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko; media controls through the use of temnyks—theme directives from the government guiding the presentation of television news; disruptions of public rallies; official harassment, beatings and arrests of hundreds of students, election activists and civic activists, and searches of civic group offices; and a likely attempt on the life of the front-running opposition candidate …

International and domestic monitoring missions confirmed many violations, including intimidation of election monitors, fraud, ballot stuffing, multiple voting, and government pressure on voters.

Election results indicate that most territorial districts of the Donestk region in Ukraine’s east gave Mr. Yanukovich 97 percent or more of the total votes. In the neighboring region of Luhansk, amid nearly 90 percent voter turnout, most districts gave Mr. Yanukovich 92 percent or more. In short, election monitors found the most evidence of massive electoral violations in the two regions responsible for Yanukovich’s large margin of supposed victory.

In public institutions, such as prisons, hospitals, and psychiatric institutions, Mr. Yanukovich won by massive margins that were often contrary to the prevailing trends in their localities …

As a bystander in a country far away one can only hope that majority will prevails. Right now the protesters look resolute enough to see that it does.

UPDATE - 24/11 18.40hr

All bets are off as Ukraine’s Central Election Commission confirms Yanukovich as the victor with 49.46% of the vote. Viktor Yushchenko polled 46.61%. Now we wait.

Tags: World Affairs

Comments:

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Wed, 24 Nov 2004 16:27 | #

Needless to point out, this story gives the lie to all the George-Soros, Wall-Street-Journal type “multi-culti,” “diversity,” “nation-state is dead” propaganda—as does virtually every news story covering political turbulence anywhere in the world in the past 60 years—or, for that matter, the past ten thousand: it’s all exactly the same.

Why won’t all people just mix? Thermodynamics: the same reason all air doesn’t just mix, so that instead of a dead calm we get something called weather, and all water in the sea doesn’t just mix, so that we’ve had Gulf Streams for a billion years. Ethno-cultural and racial community, nationality, and the nation-state are everywhere the underlying organizing principle of societal structure and are as strong now as ever—maybe stronger. None of that is going to go anywhere: it’s here to stay, for the foreseeable future at least. All that’s happening with this multi-culti “innovation” (multi-culti is simply a new weapon of war—a deadlier one than the atomic bomb, by the way) is a winnowing-out of the weak among the various groups, to see who will be replaced by whom and who will go extinct. Such competitions conducted in the past by means of shooting war are being conducted now by less-bloody, less-messy multi-culti-diversity propaganda. The aims and inevitable outcomes of the struggle remain unchanged since ten thousand years before the Bible was written: one side will emerge victorious, at which point all the multi-culti-diversity-tolerance-nation-state-is-dead squawking will suddenly as if by magic go silent, as if it had never existed. The victory will go of course to they who have eyes to see what’s in front of their noses—not always easy, as George Orwell pointed out.

But no, these fundamental principles aren’t going anywhere. All the rest—all of it—all the multi-culti, “diversity,” anti-racism, “the nation-state is dead” nonsense is just jockeying for position among the contenders. Obviously those contenders who don’t even know they’re under attack haven’t a prayer of emerging, and are as good as dead.

Observing how frozen water always thawed back into water, Democritus and Lucretius understood there were atoms, elemental embodiments, elemental bearers, of a thing’s fundamental identity that didn’t change. Observing exactly the same ethno-cultures, races, religions, and nations thaw out of Yugoslavia as were originally frozen into it, we understand the same about societal organization: there are atoms of societal structure which—I’m very sorry, Mr. Soros—aren’t going to change.

No: nationalism, ethno-cultural-racial organisation of societies, and the nation-state aren’t going anywhere: they’ll be sticking around for the foreseeable duration. Nations and groups are just fighting among themselves as they’ve always done, employing different means at the moment, less-bloody propaganda weapons which are nevertheless extremely powerful. The counter-weapon, fortunately, is at hand, and always has been: a pair of eyes in one’s head. And oh yes—I almost forgot: the eyes have to line up with the holes in one’s face (in other words, as they say in French, you have to be someone dont les yeux sont en face des trous—a tall order for certain individuals, I admit—individuals such as George Bush, Karl Rove, Tony Blair, David Blunkett, and Jacques Chirac).

Posted by Geoff M. Beck on Wed, 24 Nov 2004 16:46 | #

Hello Fred:

I think the nation state is much weakened. As you can see in the dark sections of the world the idea of nationhood, seeded by Europeans, has failed: Look at Cameroon, Nigeria, Pakistan and the like.

In the West we also see a re-orientation. Religious and ethnic groups are claiming duties once only assigned to the state: Look at the demise of Yugoslavia into ethnic, linguistic enclaves.

In the other states like the “UK” you see devolution of power to regional tribes. Remember the Monarchy worked hard to bring Scotland into the fold and Cromwell subdued Ireland, or part of it.

Those verdicts are now being overturned.

Here in America corporations will soon be managing the Social Security system, since the government can’t cope with it. Christians are forming economic and banking pacts.

I’d also expect California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico to be severed from the Union within 30 years.

With regards to Ukraine there appears to be a ethnic split over Russian & non-Russian.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:40 | #

Let constituent tribes, then (or sub-nations, or whatever you want to call them), of nations properly so-called or of completely artificial constructs like Yugoslavia—or anything in between—come together and come apart in ways and arrangements that suit them. But don’t let them go extinct individually by falling prey to multi-culti/diversity/tolerance/excessive-incompatible-immigration/death-of-the-nation-state propaganda. That propaganda has been concocted for one purpose and one purpose only: the eradication of hated groups by groups that hate them.

Not only is there nothing wrong with being a member of a tribe, there’s everything right with it. Everyone notices, by the way, the hypocrisy of certain intellectuals and pundits who constantly denounce ethno-cultural and racial patriots as “tribalists,” intending that word as highly pejorative, while themselves members-in-good-standing of a group characterized by an intense and deep feeling of tribal identity and loyalty.

As Mark Steyn implied in a column not too long ago, these wars by means of excessive incompatible immigration, multi-culti, and the like, will not result in a homogeneous blend of everyone, but will leave distinct groups still standing after the dust has settled. The last group standing wins. That group will of course be the one least taken in by all the propaganda.

That’s the reality of this war—yes, war—being waged. Everything else is an insane Marxist or Wall Street pipedream.

Posted by Geoff Beck on Wed, 24 Nov 2004 18:02 | #

What national construct isn’t artificial?

Certainly nothing is sacrosanct about the boundaries of the US, Spain, or Bulgaria. If you question the integrity of Yugoslavia you must honestly look at your own political unit and ask are the same centrifugal forces also at work.

What gives these boundaries meaning is the state.

Tribes?

Well, perhaps, as you suggest these new forces like tribalism, religious awakening and such are pointing to a new arrangments of states?

But tribalism isn’t the same thing as a state, governmentally.

Honestly, if you look at Los Angeles, California, you must acknowledge that substantial parts of the city are not under control of the state.

These sections, like East Los Angeles are effectively ruled by Mexican gangs, like MS-13. The state has failed to preserve its sovereignty.

Respectfully,

Geoff