Johnstone had a twisted understanding of what happened in Yugoslavia at the time because she understood neither the politics of the nascent oligarchs in Serbia and elsewhere and did not understand the roots of nationalist enmities there.

Now, she makes similar errors about Ukraine.  (Somehow, she even makes an analogy of Quebec, which is so far a part of Canada and May well vote democratically to remain so, with Ukraine, which is a separate country from Russia.)   She does not consider the fact that the Maidan movement had mass support in much of the country, tho more so in the west, and that polls showed large majorities supported it even in the east and south. And that much of the eastern part of Ukraine wants to stay part of Ukraine, and fears Russian imperialism.

She takes scattered evidence about the USA government reaction to this uprising, which did indeed try to influence events in behalf of us imperial interests, and has been willing to see some fascist influence in its government, and jumps from that to the puppet master interpretation.  And she may be assuming the legitimacy of Russian imperial interests against those of the Ukrainian people.

There are clashing USA, Russian, and perhaps German / EU imperialists at work here. The threat of war is real, and the best analogy may be 1914.  But to try to understand it through puppetmaster fairy tales is like trying to choose sides in 1914--that is, a sure way to irrelevancy for the left and to undercut our ability to organize for peace.

I was amused, by the way, that Johnstone says she understood Yugoslav situation because she talked with old friends, given the ways in which some people on this list discount my similar info from participants in the Maidan movement.

Sent from my iPad

> On Mar 23, 2014, at 4:23 AM, Claudia Chaufan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> precedent