One thing I didn’t mention in my earlier post on the Panamanian document drop is one of the figures who seems to be implicated: the present President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko. As fifth president he’s just another in a long line of crooks in that country.
The Russians claim that the present Ukrainian government are fascists. Fascist crooks. And we’re supporting them.
And Ted Cruz wants to arm them. Because why wouldn’t we want to arm anti-semitic, fascist kleptocrats in a fight with the world’s other great nuclear power? A nuclear power with very considerable conventional power like, right there, not ten feet away. I can see no difficulties arising from that. Nope.
I was more amused by the presence of Icelandic politicians on the list. If the corruption got to them…..
I think that arming the Ukrainians, urging them to join NATO, admitting them to the EU are all dumb ideas. The first is a feverish symptom of people who never met a war they didn’t like. The second is born from the notion that the purpose of NATO is to foment war with Russia. The last is part of Germany’s grand plan. There is no European country so profligate or criminal that they won’t produce an expansion of Germany’s markets.
BTW, Ukraine’s per capita GDP, relative to other European countries is better only than that of Moldova. The relation of Ukraine’s per capita GDP to Estonia’s is about the same as that of Mexico’s to the U. S.’s if that gives you any idea.
How we could think they’d make a good NATO member or Germany would think of admitting them to the EU eludes me.
For Russians, everyone they don’t like is a NAZI. Why did Soviet movies rarely had American bad guys? “The Soviet Union was the hero who slew the dragon; defeating the Third Reich was a point of national pride. There would never be a more important opponent. The Soviets couldn’t reasonably elevate the Americans to the same status, or even to the status of the White Guard of the bloody Russian Civil War—the USSR’s origin-story villains, in a way.”
In the case of Ukraine they actually have some reason. I’ve posted the pictures before. It was the swastika armbands and the Nazi salutes that gave them away.
I don’t think David Duke was/is a NAZI, he just dressed for effect — piss off your enemies.
BTW/ we went to the National WWII Museum last week, which is quite well done, but the role of the Soviet Union was significantly reduced. I think it might drive a Russian patriot quite mad. It is a U.S. “national” museum though.
PD:
One of my beefs about the teaching of US history.
Of course we also leave out the fact that Stalin was in bed with Hitler well into the war, and his idiotic purge of the Red Army, not to mention his general strategic dimness, are major reasons why Barbarossa was so bloody for the Soviets. Had the Red Army been well-led, adequately-equipped, and not run by a paranoid there might not have been a Leningrad or a Stalingrad.
In fact, had Stalin been even a bit more competent the whole war might have ended a year earlier while we were still just getting to North Africa. But don’t try to tell a Russian that.
@michael, I think part of the issue was the museum’s institutional history. It was originally a D-Day museum built in New Orleans because that’s where the amphibious landing craft were built. It broadened to include the island-hopping campaigns of the Pacific which also used the vehicle, and Stephen Ambrose and Tom Hanks lobbied and raised funds for a national museum at the site to commemorate the experience of the American soldier (and the merchant marine, and the “Rosie the Riveter” women).
As long as one understands it’s a museum about the American experience, then it makes sense. But it’s so seemingly comprehensive that the Soviets are almost non-existent. I certainly don’t recall the German/Soviet pact at the museum, but that was before America entered the War. The National WWI museum is much more international.
Yeah, I’ve been to the one in New Orleans, but it was quite a while ago and I have the vague sense that it was still a D-Day theme. This book series I’m writing has sent me plunging back into WW2 for some – tax deductible! – reading and travel. Heading to Oradour-sur-Glane, the Ardennes, Dresden, Berlin and Buchenwald this summer. I’ve already been to Omaha, but I’m going to try and get to the hedgerow country as well.
And I’m sort of half-assedly working on a WW2 (ETO) non-fiction thing designed in the style popularized by the NYT’s Snowfall: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek I don’t know how to monetize it, but I’ve long believed that any half decent fiction writer can do a better job of teaching history than the $80, 20 pound textbooks they shove off on kids. I think I can take any major historical event and give any kid over the age of 10 a fair understanding of the basics in less than 30 minutes read time.
If it works I may do a Civil War one. Now, who do I know that knows a great deal about the Civil War. . . Hmmm. . . Uses initials. . .
I would like to think that you are right PD, but you can talk with lots of self-declared WWII “experts” who scoff at the idea that Russia had much to do with winning the war.
Steve
Ah, yo see they be our fascist crooks, not Russian autocrats. As such, the goals outlined in the State Department’s fact sheet on Ukraine, democracy, open markets, putting a stick on the spokes of Vald’s bicycle are doable. That they wind up with a system Theodore Bilbo or Huey Long would recognize is not as important as the rate of return on American investments in Ukraine.
I am starting to think that I stumbled onto someone’s beta they inadvertently published. It was quite a smooth site. You had to search by country, but if you left the second field blank it would return every name they associated with the US. There were quite a few (maybe 75?) names listed as US. They even had a graphic that would show you connections between the search result and other elements of the database. I don’t get it.