Stench Along The Trail

What can I say about 2014?

At best, that it wasn't another 1914 - though not by much. And who knows what future historians might say about that, provided there are any.

It was a year of anniversaries: 15 years ago this March, NATO attacked Serbia (which occasioned a gut-wrenching documentary and a war of images on Twitter and Facebook). A hundred years ago this July, Austria-Hungary had attacked Serbia and set off the Great War.

Vienna had claimed it was a victim of "Serbian terrorism" and was conducting a "punishment expedition" against "bandits." It was a monstrous lie. Austria-Hungary perished in the ensuing cataclysm, though its specter continues to haunt Europe to the present day. It is hardly a coincidence that today's flashpoint - the Ukraine - was also the site of Austro-Hungarian ethnic engineering over a century ago. Or that there is an unbroken line between 1914 and today, running straight through Hitler...

To me personally, the events in the Ukraine were an uncanny re-run of the early 1990s and the demise of Yugoslavia. Even the instigators were the same: NATO, United States, the Atlantic Empire - as was the pattern of fomenting dissent, double standards, and backing Nazis.

There was also the incessant propaganda, as brazen as it was stupid. And yet, the sheer amount of it has generated enough poison that even the critics have not been able to resist the toxic residue. Perhaps the best example of how the media operate has been the "PUTIN KILLED MY SON" hysteria over the Malaysian airliner, which abruptly stopped once the Russians offered evidence to the contrary. Without any acknowledgment of the lies, of course.

You won't hear many challenges to the mainstream media reporting in the supposedly "free and democratic" West. At most you will laugh at the skewering of lies and lying liars in a German comedy show. Yet it should tell you much about the times we live in that only comedians are allowed to challenge the powerful...

Meanwhile, Bosnia and Serbia were hit by some of the worst flooding in a century. Western media only began noticing once tennis champion Novak Djokovic called them out on it - and donated his entire winnings from a tournament for the relief effort. Months later, USAID tried to influence the Bosnian elections by producing TV ads accusing the local governments of embezzling Western flood aid - though such aid never actually came. That election, by the way, was a veritable parade of plagiarism and absurdity.

In 2014, the Islamic State arose in Iraq and Syria, to the great joy of the Empire. Albanians were able to disrupt a soccer game with a drone - the first such attack in history - with impunity. And the U.S. government tried to use "Serbian music promoters" in a failed bid to conquer Cuba - only to abruptly abandon the decades-long blockade in December (while keeping the goal of regime change in Havana).

It was the year Falcon got a graphical update, but I ended up being too busy to wish it a happy 10th anniversary.

The oddest thing is, while I obviously couldn't predict the details of what would come to pass, a month before the Empire-backed coup in Kiev unleashed Hell I wrote this:

"[A]s the great Serbian poet Njegos once wrote, "He whose law lies only in the cudgel, has a trail that reeks of inhumanity."
This isn't about Ukraine, or about democracy, or human rights, or "freedom" - it's about having only the cudgel, and the entire world looking like something to beat with it.
It's about crushing any thought of there being an alternative to the "end-of-history" West.
It's about power.
Just follow the stench along the trail.

So, while I am grateful this wasn't another 1914, I am really glad 2014 is over. And I wish us all a better 2015, with all the help from the Almighty we can hope for. I have a feeling we'll need it.

I told you so...

It is that time of the year, when one draws the line and tallies up everything that's happened. My overview of 2014 is up today on Antiwar.com.

While I really don't have a habit of saying "I told you so," or even self-promoting much, this passage from last January leaped out at me in the process of writing that article:

As philosopher Alfred Korzybski famously noted, the map is not the territory. Yet both Imperial and EU officials and their regional clients firmly believe that they can magically alter territory by making alterations on the map. Sooner or later, something will put that belief to the test. It may even happen this year.

I would argue this is precisely what the current conflict is all about. The Atlantic Empire asserts it has the sole right to determine reality, right and wrong, virtue and vice, and impose that on the entire world - because of the divine right of "democracy." Russia - and many others - think this is absurd, unacceptable and perhaps even outright evil.

Until now, nobody who wasn't directly under attack made too much of an effort to resist; nobody wanted to become another Serbia, Libya, Iraq, Syria, or any country "improved" by a "color revolution" or two. But now that Russia is under attack, it has no choice but to resist. And others are coming to the realization that "hoping the Empire eats me last" isn't a strategy, but an absence of one.

And when delusions of omnipotence meet the wall of reality, who do you think is going to win?