The Clowns of War Risking It All

 

BY JOHN KENDALL HAWKINS

What have we got going on here?  It’s getting crazy. War drums beating everywhere. War mascara worn by worried women crying, Wah. The Washington Football Team — now the Washington Commanders — setting up a situation where it’s all chiefs and no indians on the field. And what’ll happen when the Chiefs are playing the Commanders? Will anybody be taking orders? Who’ll be receiving the long bomb?  Who’ll pray Hail Mary? Halftime jets screaming overhead burning more fuel? Ain’t you aren’t? Probably it’ll all end in a drunkard’s dream on the Hangover Monday holiday.

Right now, the media, all of them, are busting open at the seams with the need for war’s gassy release. If someone lights a match in the current climate: BOOM. Will the Russians invade Taiwan?  Will the Red Army descend like Huns on the war chickens in Kiev, forcing the Ukrainians to build a willing wall? Or a mall? Or a hall? Or some dodge to hide their loot in? Will Bucky Bucky Beaver finally pull the lever on the Fall? Say, That’s All, folks! Will the Smiling Buddha finally have the nirvana to laugh his ass off? Cry, suffer motherfuckers! Will the Pakis deliver their Sunni warheads to the Saudis? Have the Russkies already delivered their nuclear cookies to the Shia Iranians? Which anti-Semite nation will Israel nuke first? There’s so many to choose from.  Will America’s PNAC pearlharborists continue to spread their dark hegemonic needs, like Johnny Bad Appleseed, around the world?

Here we are — the hoi polloi — waiting waiting waiting for Donny Brook to weigh in.

Here I am, no Monroe Doctrinaire, believe me.  I’m all, let ‘em have Taiwan; it used to be theirs anyway before they went commie; just as Hong Kong was theirs before we forced Opium wars on them and took HK as a prize.  Give Korea back to the Koreans; let them fight over the kimchi and future Oscars; it was One beautiful place until it got divided along lines of ideological influence — between cappies and commies. Both suck. When was the last time you heard an ordinary American extol the endless value of Capitalism?  Before you give a namby-pamby answer, recall that there’s a good case to be made that Climate Change is largely the product of global economic growth enforced by the endless war machine (75 years and counting) polluting the Earth as it goes, which includes a total disregard for population expansion (the moribund oboe elephant in the room) which only benefits the elite.

But, that little tantrum aside, I wonder if Ukraine is worth fighting over anyway. As the reader will know I’ve already spent a galaxy of pixel ink covering the shenanigans there in the past. While I missed Ukraine’s 2013/14 Maidan Coup in my coverage of the region (I was a columnist for the now-defunct Prague Post — nothing there now but a sto ho whistling Dixie — covering European issues; probably I would have seen Nord 2 “issue” from a German perspective), it looks like I won’t miss the next one. Last year, I wrote about Burisma until exhaustion set in.  I’ve been reading about the ‘Kraine, and it ain’t lookin’ pretty.

Most of the bases look to be covered. NATO. Will Germany follow France and UK in pushing back against “Russian aggression” and provide cause for keeping the Nord 2 spigot locked, and the consequent political problem of Nord 1 alive for future pretext purposes?  Will Russia accede to limp fish demands to allow nuclear missiles aimed at them in distances far closer to Moscow than Cuba’s missiles ever were against DC? That’s all been covered. (How about that Ron Jacobs precis: “Ukraine as Game Board.”)

What I can’t understand is why “we” care at all about Ukraine.  Sure, it was at the center of a storm last year, being Joe Biden’s old portfolio as VP, who knew the whistleblower (a Ukraine attached for Obama) that finked on Trump with hearsay information to the IG leading to DJ’s pointless impeachment at the same time the Coronavirus was knock knock knockin on our doors. In his biography of the Bidens, Ben Schreckinger explains Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma: “He was tasked with helping Burisma clean up its corporate governance and paid roughly $1 million a year to do it. The easy money allowed Hunter to feed his worsening drug addiction.” (Schreckinger, 161)

It was also learned — through Hunter himself, in his, of-all-things, a ghost-written memoir (see my review) where he tells us can’t remember much, and spent his $50,000 per month  (for years) Burisma board director’s salary drinking, rockin, and sexin’ — including a cameo appearance in his dead brother’s wife’s vagina. Then he had the temerity to add, after his admitted profligacy that “having a Biden on Burisma’s board was a loud and unmistakable f*ck-you to Putin.” (Biden, 92)  This raises the question I was hoping to avoid: If Hunter Biden was a big fuck you, then what did Vlad “The Impaler” Putin think of Cofer “Flies On Their Eyeballs” Black’s appointment to the board of Burisma in 2017? Nobody’s asking.

Is Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky worth defending? I didn’t ask that last year, but I’ve got rare footage.  Put differently, if a Boris Yeltsin were head of Ukraine right now, would we give a toss, or would we spend all our time cracking up over his vodka-fueled jokes and imitation Mandela dances? His ascension in 2019 to the presidency of Ukraine was a strange dream that smelled of Tarkovsky and David Lynch and bizarro B movies from the ‘50s that contained accidental drifts into themes with bizarre metaphysical overtones. Who is this guy that all the swains commend him and do no homework on?

Yeltsin was a clown.  Zelensky was a comedian.

Zelensky was a comedian who starred in a gigolo-ish role in several Sex in the City knockoffs before finding his niche market TV program called Servant of the People, where he plays Vasiliy, a slick teacher hamming out episodic rants against corruption and calling on the clean sweep of grime crimes, and who becomes so popular on the TV show that he ascends the Presidency of the Ukraine by season 2 — an inspiration to the masses; a man willing to spank some oligarchic asses. Servant of the People was number in its time slot.  It was so popular that some floppy bozos got to work and floated balloons that contained the question: Why not Zelensky as real president? (Imagine Madame Secretary’s Hillary-seem-alike Téa Leoni going from TV State Department populist to the presidency her inspiration could never achieve, despite the air of entitlement.) Truth can be stranger than fiction, believe me, but it gets worse.

Servant of the People aired on TV channel 1+1, whose controlling partner is Ihor Valeriyovych Kolomoyskyi (IVK). When the bozos, referred to above, got “serious” and pushed for Zelensky’s move from TV comedian to political ass-spanker of the rich, they started a new party — the festive, gaily-lit and now familiar Servant of the People Party.  News is now making the rounds — thanks to the sassy frazzes at the Ukrainian fraud de-panters, Investigation.Info — that Zelensky’s campaign was given $40 million by Kolomoyskyi. IVK may be, according to some highly-placed rumor pushers, the most corrupt oligarch in Ukrainian history.

It’s not just Investigation.Info that feels that way either. IVK is under US Justice Department investigation defrauding billions from Privat Bank, which he controlled, in Ukraine — pulling out the life savings of millions of ordinary people to Ukrainians — and money laundering the dough through tired old US mill towns.  (Here and Here.) The US Justice Department has petitioned a US district court to seize IVK property, stating in part:

Ihor Kolomoisky is a billionaire Ukrainian oligarch. He controls businesses in many sectors of the Ukrainian economy, including metals, energy, and media, under the umbrella of the “Privat Group” …Over the course of more than a decade, Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Boholiubov used their control of PrivatBank to steal billions of dollars of the bank’s funds. The magnitude of the fraud and theft was so great that NBU was forced to bail out the bank by providing $5.5 billion in order to stave off economic crisis for the whole country.

IVK was actually said to be negotiating with Zelensky in the Fall of 2019 for recompense of his lost wages of sin when his bank was nationalized.

The piece that this bit is offered up in also reminds the reader that IVK’s lawyer became Zelensky’s chief of staff after the election.  Probably most importantly, the article, “Ukraine’s former national bank chief fears for life after arson attack,” suggests that our fun-loving vanquisher of grift and gravy trains also potentially gladhands with a murderer.  

Well, IVK’s role and influence on Z’s politics and pocketbook are one thing. But there’s also another sidekick who needs mentioning, Mikhailo Federov, now serving the Ukrainian people as First Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation. Federov became good buds with Zelensky by running his presidential campaign.  Zelensky virtually had no platform. He ran off the excess gas from his TV show Servant of the People. Federov was pressed on this matter by a Vice news journalist after the election.  Federov said Zelensky, the Reformer, was there to make a buck:

It was a PLUS that Z. had had no previous political experience — beyond his TV rise to the presidency.  (Sound familiar?)

The potential zaniness continues with the 30-ish Federov, slated to take over for Z., if the latter should have an accident or find himself with a horse’s head in his newly feathered bed. Federov has seemingly set himself up as the nation’s Zuckerberg and Google monster combined — pushing, within months of Z’s new ratings climb, the notion of a “state in a smartphone.” The DIIA system would centralize all government services under one domain, including voting, and appears to be modelled after the one emplaced by Estonia, which has received much acclaim. (See also, New Yorker’s “Estonia, the Digital Republic.”) Sigh.

If only Ukraine and Estonia could switch geographical locations. Some say. Anyway, let’s just be polite and say that Federov is no Mark Zuckerberg, although he probably gets the same number of women Zuck gets.  Federov’s DIIA is still nowhere ready for primetime, but more importantly it seems unrealistic in a state that can’t shake corruption and makes fun of it, instead, by voting in an actor who specializes in scolding oligarchs, like a mom who wags her finger at her boy caught with fingers in the cookie jar but knows it means he loves her transubstantially through the cookies, and she pours him a glass of Jesus milk to go with the theft of her love. Imagine what might happen should a nasty oligarch snatch on to this centralized scheme. Ransomware placed there by a thief too big to fail? I swoon.

Right now, Federov’s DIIA “government on a keychain” looks like a scam in the making to milk money from unsuspecting village idiots by the thousands (there are lots of villages in the region. Think: Prince Myshkin. And all the other madmen “shaking dead geraniums,” as T.S. Eliot would put it.) Federov did say that Zelensky’s value was as a “monetizer.”  So, the real question is: Is Zelensky a puppet of  IVK? asked by the BBC:

 

While we’re pondering this question, it mightn’t be a bad idea to place Cofer Black on the risky game board.  Recall that he is on the board Burisma (never fully investigated for the money-laundering allegations leveled against it, even during Hunter’s bumble stumble there.) and it would have been nice had a six-figure MSM journalist with “contacts” mused over this appointment. More recently we discover that Black is a Network expert at OODA, an international security agency, where Black’s bio tells us, “He conceived, planned, and led the CIA’s role in the war in Afghanistan.” He could prove useful at Burisma being a big fuck you and more, still affiliated with mercenaries with gridiron flags they might throw when the signal comes.

Where is the “whistleblower” whose hearsay information, reported to the Inspector General, led directly to Donald J. Trump getting pointlessly and ineffectively impeached?  Recall that CIA hero whistleblower John Kiriakou said the guy was no whistleblower. He was, said Kiriakou, instead likely a “king killer.”  (Maybe just like Deep Throat wasn’t really a whistleblower, but a king killer who helped bring down Nixon, with whom he was angry because he’d been bypassed for the FBI directorship after Hoover died.) Kiriakou argued that this whistleblower’s time left at the CIA would be short — they hate whistleblowers, in general, and would never trust someone willing to bring down the chief executive.

 

So where is the unnamed but known whistleblower today?  Is he still there?  Does he consult with Joe about Ukraine?

What does Putin have on Biden? It might be a better question than those asked about Trump? Is it worth the risk of going to war for?  We don’t want to slip into conspiracy theory territory, but Zelensky and Biden do have one thing in mind: The monetization of Ukraine.  So, yes, NATO is a problem, but also the money. Follow the money, said Deep Throat.  

Prediction: If the moronic Democrats lose the majority in the House in November, expect Old Joe to go the route of Trump — impeachment.

John Kendall Hawkins is an American ex-pat freelancer based in Australia.  He is a former reporter for The New Bedford Standard-Times.              

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/09/the-clowns-of-war-risking-it-all/