“Murder most foul, as in the best it is”… but the murder of yet another innocent family in Gorlovka, East Ukraine, properly qualifies for being “most foul, strange and unnatural.” And, given that brevity is the soul of wit (1), in the short video, linked to this blog, brevity is the soul of horror.
We walk through what remains of the house of a family wiped out by the guns of Kiev’s “freedom fighters”, nomenclature of frightful, macabre and Reaganesque memory.
We know already of the thousands killed in East Ukraine, after the coup in Kiev. But “things that move, sooner catch the eye than what not stirs” (2), which is also the main purpose for showing this short video. For the details and consequences of an actual, visible crime, exceed in impact what can be imagined in generalities.
Incidentally, the video-producer and narrator on site in Ukraine is clearly American. His message speaks for itself, considering that the event, occurred on May 29, 2015, went unreported by the mainstream media – or maybe was filed in the virtual folder, “Nothing new on the Western front”, subfolder, “Occasional violations of the cease-fire.” Some violations, some cease-fire (!)
Here it is, (click on image if you wish to see the video now)
To complete this blog, or rather, “to end this tale of woe”(3), I include an even shorter video from “Democracy Now” (just watch the first 1m and 55 seconds). It is a press briefing (and the dialog is also transcribed in full at the end of the blog), featuring Jen Psaki, White House spoke-person.
The exchange comes straight from a page of George Orwell. She tells a questioning reporter that, “As a matter of long-standing policy, the United States does not support political transitions (new-speak for “regime change”), by non-constitutional means. Political transitions must be democratic, constitutional, peaceful and legal.” (!) To suggest otherwise is “ludicrous.”
And when another reporter suggests that in Ukraine that policy was neither true, nor long-standing, Jen Psaki dismisses the reporter’s point as equally “ludicrous.”
Which brings to mind the line, “… he (‘she’ in this case) will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool” (4)
“Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying” (5), says Falstaff. But Jen Psaki is a relatively young woman, which makes her “vice of lying” even worse.
On the other hand, Jen Psaki, in her own way, is telling the truth. For in the Bible of the “Thought Unique” empirical truth is irrelevant.
There is not, as yet, a standing Inquisition, punishing the heretics of the Thought Unique via the secular arms of the tribunals. Though, in these golden years of the current administration, the parallel is not hard to spot.
Secular tribunals have punished people whose names ring now in the mind of millions, Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and several others, for questioning the truth of the Thought Unique.
As for the Jen Psakis of this world, even before the word ‘psychologist’ was invented, (in 1748), there were men who imagined themselves to have looked, with more than common penetration, into human nature.
And they endeavored to persuade their contemporaries, that each man (or woman) is born with a mind formed peculiarly for certain purposes, and with desires unalterably aimed at particular objects and objectives – from which their attention cannot be long diverted. And as the objectives are well or ill pursued, they produce the praise or blame, the happiness or misery of their future life.
The reader can quickly guess what objectives produce Jen Psaki’s happiness and that of her professional kin – in the context of truth or mendacity.
It would be therapeutic to laugh at these official externations of democratic wisdom, so as not to cry and to prevent nausea. Were it not that, at the end of the trail beginning with this nonsense, we find the destroyed family of Gorlovka, the other thousands killed in Ukraine and the millions worldwide. For in the end, they too are victims of the Thought Unique.
At the close of the Gorlovka video, the producer points at the house destroyed of the destroyed family and says, “This is what’s happening every day in Ukraine. The Nazis, that the US backs, are murdering civilians here.” And he asks, “What are you going to do about it?”
My answer (and probably that of most readers and watchers) is, “I wish I knew, I wish I could.”
Or, perhaps, we must resign ourselves to repeat with Cassius, “Men at some time, are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”(6)
(1) Hamlet
(2) (3) Troilus and Cressida
(4) All’s Well That Ends Well
(5) King Henry IV, part 2
(6) Julius Caesar
In the play (title quote). The ghost makes his case with Hamlet.
Full dialog of the Press Briefing
REPORTER: President Maduro last night went on the air and said that they had arrested multiple people who were allegedly behind a coup that was backed by the United States. What is your response?
JEN PSAKI: These latest accusations, like all previous such accusations, are ludicrous. As a matter of long-standing policy, the United States does not support political transitions by non-constitutional means. Political transitions must be democratic, constitutional, peaceful and legal. We’ve seen many times that the Venezuelan government tries to distract from its own actions by blaming the United States or other members of the international community for events inside Venezuela. These efforts reflect a lack of seriousness on the part of the Venezuelan government to deal with the grave situation it faces.
MATT LEE: Sorry. The U.S. has—whoa, whoa, whoa—the U.S. has a long-standing practice of not promoting—what did you say? How long-standing is that? I would—in particular in South and Latin America, that is not a long-standing practice.
JEN PSAKI: Well, my point here, Matt, without getting into history—
MATT LEE: Not in this case.
JEN PSAKI: —is that we do not support, we have no involvement with, and these are ludicrous accusations.
MATT LEE: In this specific case.
JEN PSAKI: Correct.
MATT LEE: But if you go back not that long ago, during your lifetime even—
JEN PSAKI: The last 21 years?
MATT LEE: Well done. Touché. But, I mean, look, does “long-standing” mean 10 years in this case? I mean, what is—
JEN PSAKI: Matt, my intention was to speak to the specific reports.
MATT LEE: I understand, but you said it’s a long-standing U.S. practice, and I’m not so sure how—depends on what your definition of “long-standing” is.
JEN PSAKI: We will—OK.
OTHER REPORTER: Recently in Kiev, whatever we say about Ukraine, whatever, the change of government in the beginning of last year was unconstitutional, and yet you supported it. The Constitution was not—
JEN PSAKI: That is also ludicrous.