Russell Brand has presented himself as being a socialist, despite being a hoarder of wealth who, by his own definitions, uses that wealth to support the victimization of Palestinians! He has cast his lot in with propagandists and liars while accusing Western media of doing exactly that! And now, while claiming to be anti-war and anti-imperialist, he provides excuses for an authoritarian dictator who has embarked on a genocidal and imperialist war! So, what is up with Russell Brand’s Topsy-Turvy world?
Welcome, you conspiring theorists! Let us travel together on a voyage of topsy-turvy back-to-frontery as we embark on our revisionist journey through the sufferings of others and obfuscate the horrors that are being wrought on an innocent population by saying it’s their fault for not getting on better with the people who are now killing and torturing them. And while we slither through our sickening inversion of reality, let’s remember that Russell is currently doing a limited number of tour dates in some of the hottest venues in the Home Counties. Do book your tickets early, not because they’re getting sold out, it’s just that the janitor needs to know how many seats to put out. And remember, Russell is a psychic vampire who feeds on the life force of his audience, so the Hug-a-Sex-Pest (™) portion of the show will definitely be going ahead (please be sure to keep at least one Chakra uncovered to aid in feeding); but the venue simply MUST be vacated by 9 PM as the W.I. needs to set up for their coffee morning the following day. And if you are in town for Russell, please do consider coming to the coffee morning; there’s a terrific bring-and-buy and, as always, a selection of homemade jams and jellies for sale - be assured that Mrs. Chakraboti has been banned from providing any preserves after last year’s unfortunate episode with the lime pickle. Mrs Antrobous still hasn’t fully recovered.
But if you can not wait for Russell’s nonsense, you could consider watching Russell’s YouTube video of February 1st, 2023, titled “Oh SH*T, Zelensky Really Just Said That?!” on the YouTube feed and “Russell on the Real Ukraine” in the video itself.
This is the last of a three-part series on this video. The first post contrasted Russell’s socialist posturings with his hoarding of wealth while he cozies up to Barclay’s Bank, a company that he’d urged his fans to boycott. The second post looked at the standards that Russell claims to apply to mainstream media and contrasts those to the media that he amplifies, which is little more than polemic propaganda on behalf of authoritarian governments in Russia and China. In this final installment, we’ll be looking at the baseless and hateful conspiracy theory that Russell is pedaling and how it demeans the people who are dying at the hands of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Russian genocide of the Ukraine people.
How do we know that Russell is pushing a conspiracy theory? Well, if the use of the words “real Ukraine” don't convince you, let all doubt be dispelled by the fact that Russell feels compelled to insist, on three separate occasions, no less, that it is not a conspiracy theory!
Russell even does us a solid by directly setting out the conspiracy theory as follows:
Don't pretend it's humanitarian. just go, ‘Listen, this is the agenda: Ukraine was ultimately a place that was too resource-rich and had too strong ties with Russia historically, politically, and even ethnically, in some cases. We're not having it; we're going in there, we're destabilizing it, we're going to provoke Russia until they engage militarily, then we're going to go in there and corporatize it.’ Why wouldn't they say that? Because that's not very popular.
Said by Russell Brand with a straight-face, not played for laughs, no scope for interpretation, and no context removed.
We should be grateful to Brand for drawing such a clear picture. Ben Norton, the author of the source articles that Russell reads from, seems to know better and just sets out the individual components of the theory, leaving it to his readers to join the dots and draw their own conclusions, a common trick among conspiracy theorists and pushers of misinformation. They avoid painting themselves into corners, give themselves plausible deniability and provide opportunities to push back in arguments: “I didn’t say that thing! How dare you call me a conspiracy theorist!”
I’ve previously mentioned stochasticism, where an actor does not explicitly call for a specific outcome but instead creates an environment where that outcome becomes inevitable. In this case, Norton just needs to put the various ideas in close proximity; “The West provoked Russia into war” and “the war is being used as an excuse to plunder resources”. It’s not unreasonable, therefore, for the unsophisticated reader, such as Russell, to assume the two items are linked so that the separate ideas merge; “the west provoked Russia into a war as an excuse for plundering resources”.
I don’t know to what degree Ben Norton is actually cognisant of this trick and how much is intuition. As we go through this post, it will become increasingly obvious that, as a child, Ben fell into a cauldron of stupid that was being brewed by the village druid and now finds himself in a permanent state of superhuman moronity.
In his above referenced statement Russell provides only a summary of the conspiracy theory that he elaborates on throughout the course of the video. We can express the complete theory as follows: The US instigated a coup in Ukraine in 2014 and then sought to obscure the subsequent civil war before providing weapons to Ukraine in 2017 in order to provoke Russia into invading Ukraine, which Russia then did FIVE YEARS LATER in 2022, thus providing US corporations the cover of providing humanitarian aid as a guise to plunder Ukraine’s natural resources. There we go. Makes perfect sense!
Except it doesn’t, does it? Does the US need to start a war to justify plundering Ukraine? And if it has a perfectly good war already in place since 2014 (a war that they are somehow downplaying - for reasons that are never explained), couldn’t they simply promote the war they already have? And why provoke an escalation that actually makes plundering Ukraine more difficult and less appealing?
To figure this out, let’s take a closer look at the individual claims…
Claim 1 : The 2014 Ukrainian Euromaidan Revolution was a US-backed coup d’etat.
Norton, Russell's source, presents two direct “facts” to support his claim. The first is that Western governments promised not to expand NATO eastward “multiple times” - as I said in the last post, this is a straight-up lie. There is, and was, no formal agreement in place that would limit NATO expansion, and claims by Putin apologists that some pinky promise not to expand NATO could somehow rise to the level of an international agreement are laughable.
The second is the snippet of a 2014 phone call between US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, which was intercepted and partially released by Russian intelligence. Norton describes this call as a “smoking gun”. In the small portion of the phone call that was leaked, Nuland and Pyatt discuss the US’s approach to Ukrainian opposition figures at the time of the Ukrainian Euromaidan protests as part of US efforts to broker a deal between the various parties.
Norton and his ilk have presented this call as evidence that the US hand-picked the next leader of Ukraine and have further inflated it into the “US-backed coup” narrative.
I dunno; seems a bit of a leap to draw such a huge conclusion from one four-minute fragment of the big picture that was the massive and intricate diplomatic process around an international crisis. This call focussed on efforts with the opposition, but it hinted at further discussions with incumbent President Yanukovych; why was that subsequent call not leaked? And why only a fragment of the first? What was said beforehand and afterward? What was the motive of the leakers in deciding what to share and what to crop?
And what of the role of the call in planning the supposed coup? That’s what it is being presented as - the “smoking gun” behind-the-curtain glimpse at the US coup planning process. If that’s the case I’d question the US’s fundamental competency in the task given that, according to Norton, the US has orchestrated coups in: Iran 1953; Guatemala 1954; Congo 1960; Brazil 1964; Indonesia 1965; Chile 1973; Haiti 1991 and again in 2004; Venezuela 2002; Ukraine 2004 (busy year, Brazil AND Ukraine), Honduras, 2009; Bolivia 2019; and “so, so many more.”
(By the way, in typical topsy-turvy form, the Ukraine 2004 entry that Norton wants to label a “US-sponsored coup” is referencing the 2004 Ukrainian presidential elections where the Russia-opposed candidate was mysteriously poisoned and the election ultimately had to be re-run due to the first one being rigged in favor of the Russia-backed candidate).
With so, so many coups under their belt, you might imagine that the US coup puppeteers would have worked out their preferred post-coup leadership sometime prior to kickoff and not in January, nearly three months into a coup they initiated in the prior November. Come on, CIA! You’re forgetting the “Six P’s” of effective project management - Proper Planning Prevents P*ss-Poor Performance!
You might also expect them to have more experience in covering their tracks and securing “OPSEC” (Operations Security) - every US embassy has a famously impregnable “SKIFF” for the exact purposes of clandestine communications, yet what does this pair do? Jump on their unencrypted cell phones. In the middle of a country rife with intrigue and crawling with hostile foreign agents. Fresh on the heels of scandals such as Wikileaks and Edward Snowden. Sounds right. Tell you what, next time, just hold your meeting directly in a Prague Cemetery.
And what about the content of the conversation? What exactly does Ben Norton expect a US Secretary of State to talk about with a US ambassador in a country on the cusp of a violent revolution?
“Mr. Ambassador, what do you think?”
“Well, ma’am, government forces have shot dead three protesters, and there has been at least one extra-judicial killing. if the Ukrainian government cracks down further on the protests, there’s a serious risk of the situation deteriorating into a bloodbath. The government does appear to be at least talking to opposition leaders and is offering some concessions, but with the Government backed by Russia, the opposition could find themselves out of their depth. We should reach out to provide support and guidance”
“No, silly, what do you think of the league?”
“Ma’am?”
“Well, the Gunners still have the top spot, but with their two-all draw to Southampton at the weekend, have they left the door open to second-placed Man’ City?”
“I fail to see the relevance…”
“So you’re a United man, then? A bold stance with them languishing at seventh; Moyes failing to fill Ferguson’s boots?”
“I don’t really see…”
“You think Chelsea’s in with a shout? A good call to bring back Mourinho, but will he bring the title back to Stamford Bridge?”
“Well, ma'am, now you come to mention it, I think Chelsea have got to be in with a chance after their victory in last year’s UEFA Cup.”
In order to provide some verisimilitude, Norton links to a transcript of the call published by the BBC. Fun thing is, this isn’t a pure transcript; it includes commentary by the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus who provides such analysis as “The clear purpose in leaking this conversation is to embarrass Washington and for audiences susceptible to Moscow's message to portray the US as interfering in Ukraine's domestic affairs.”
Hmm, “Audiences susceptible to Moscow’s message”, I wonder what he could possibly mean.
What about “An intriguing insight into the foreign policy process”? Or “efforts to get the UN to play an active role in bolstering a deal”. So the UN is in on the coup now??!!
And, in his final assessment, “The US is clearly much more involved in trying to broker a deal in Ukraine than it publicly lets on” - broker a deal, not incite a coup - and quoting Putin’s advisor on Ukraine,“Russia...must interfere in Ukraine.”
Pretty typical BBC “both sides” effort - hardly a “smoking gun” for a “US-backed coup”. But thanks for adding context, Ben.
There is no nice way to say it, but Ben Norton really is just a f*cking moron.
Surely he could’ve found a clean transcript of the call without the BBC’s even-handed analysis attached to undermine his coup narrative? If he tried hard, he might’ve been able to find a transcript with analysis from a fellow tin-foil-hat tankie willing to push the coup narrative. But he’s too stupid or lazy for that (why not both?).
But, regardless of any of this, the rewriting of the Euromaidan is an insult to Ukraine as a whole, but especially to the 108 protestors who died, 48 of whom were gunned down by government snipers over the course of only half an hour on February 20th 2014. It was the resolve of the protesters, even in the face of those deaths, and the subsequent triggering of protests in cities outside of Kyiv, in areas that had previously been supportive of the Yanukovich regime, that made the government back down within 24 hours. And it was to avoid the consequences of those deaths that Yanukovich fled the country the next day.
It is still jarring, to consider a protest movement of young people standing up to and being murdered by an authoritarian regime and to find Russell Brand on the side of the government gunmen! Russell. Brand!
To insist that this was a coup that was “planned and provoked” by the USA paints the Euromaidan participants as either CIA-recruited shills or brainwashed idiots. It says that those who protested, including those who made the ultimate sacrifice, were doing so in bad faith or ignorance. It robs them of agency.
Similarly, claims of “NATO expansion” as a provocation deny Ukraine of agency on two counts: first, it denies that Ukrainians want NATO membership, or else they are too stupid to realize they are pawns of foreign powers - they are passive parties to an expansionist NATO; Second, it denies them membership of NATO on the grounds that it might upset Russia. As I said in my last post, former imperial powers have no right to dictate the actions of their former imperial possessions and should not be surprised if those former possessions adopt positions that are not agreeable to their former masters.
So the claim that the 2014 Euromaidan was a US-backed coup? The only evidence forwarded is a four-minute snippet of a call that did happen but whose mere existence goes a very long way from supporting the position that this was a US-backed coup and may actually contradict it when you consider both the content and the setting.
Claim 2: Western governments and/or media have sought to obscure the fact that there has been a war in Ukraine since 2014.
Russell claims, without providing evidence, that “the duration of the war is a mainstream media construction” and that the media are pushing “ridiculous narratives that are fit only for children”.
Without even resorting to Wikipedia, from the top of my head, I can think of a bunch of reporting on the pre-2022 Ukraine conflict:
- The initial invasion by Russian forces masquerading as separatists;
- Russian special forces dubbed “Putin’s Little Green Men” seized Sevastopol and Crimea;
- Reporting on heavy weapons provided by Russia to the so-called separatists (including lots of OSINT (Open Sourced intelligence) of Russian tanks and guns in Ukraine);
- The use of some of that heavy weaponry in the downing of a Malaysian airliner crammed full of EU tourists from the Netherlands made a few headlines, and even a couple of episodes of Russell’s Trews. Not to mention periodic updates on investigations and possible prosecutions;
- The decision of Obama not to provide deadly aid to Ukraine. That was quite contentious for a while;
- Then there was the decision by Trump in 2017 to sell lethal, defensive weapons to Ukraine;
- Oh, yeah, and the subsequent impeachment trial of the President of the United States of America when it was revealed that he had attempted to use those weapon sales as leverage in obtaining “dirt” on his political opponents. That caused a bit of a stir, as you can imagine.
So, yeah, it wracked up a few stories in the “mainstream media”. And remember, this is a period of time that incorporates such world events as (again, from the top of my head) ISIS rampaging across Iraq and Syria, the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean, the Brexit referendum, figuring out how to do Brexit, Brexit itself, Trump’s uneventful run for president, the various other upsets of that US election cycle, including Russia’s interference (by Norton’s standards, this makes Trump’s win in 2016 a Russia-backed coup!), Trump’s presidency (and all the fun that entailed), the COVID pandemic, and then the second Russia-backed coup attempt in the USA on Jan 6th 2021 (see, two can play at that game!).
What is quite amusing is Russell’s invocations of Professor Jeffery Sachs and his prior appearances on Russell’s videos; claiming that when the good prof “came on our show, he said that this war is eight years in the making”. Sachs, who I’ve previously written about here, is the grand architect of the very economic shock therapy that Norton is warning about in the article that Russell is quoting from. I mean, the headline itself is a bit of a giveaway: “West prepares to plunder post-war Ukraine with neoliberal shock therapy: privatization, deregulation, slashing worker protections”. Norton goes so far as to link to a UNICEF report that he claims shows Sachs’ interventions in Russia led to “3.2 million excess deaths, and pushed 18 million children into poverty”. Yikes! Seems like the good prof has some blood on his hands. Norton also directs his ire at “Disaster Capitalists” - funnily enough, a phrase coined for one, er, Jeffery Sachs by Naomi Klein back in 2007!
So, the obscuring of the conflict in Ukraine from 2014 to 2022: no evidence provided; not true anyway; and just doesn’t make any sense at all in terms of Brand’s narrative, as we shall see when we discuss…
Claim 3: The large-scale 2022 Russian invasion was provoked by the US providing weapons to Ukraine.
Essentially a continuation of the baffling claims that the pre-2022 war was somehow being covered up, we now arrive at the perplexing concept that the West had to provoke a further escalation to publicize a war they had been downplaying.
Once again, Norton’s logic circuits have overloaded and fried his brain, and we’re treated to one of his non-sequitur arguments. He describes the Pre-2022 conflict, which commenced in 2014, as a “civil war” (therefore excluding Russian involvement) while alleging that it did involve the US as “foreign sponsors”, despite the US only selling weapons to Ukraine more than three years into the war, in 2017. This was done as a provocation to Russia, who didn’t act upon that provocation until five years later, in 2022.
That there is some weak tea! It’s not even a post hoc rationalization; none of this theory is rational.
Norton directly acknowledges that the provoked Russian invasion is contrary to the plunderers’ interests when he asks, “In Ukraine, what’s even left to loot?”. He goes on to cite as drains on Ukrainian wealth: the US Lend-Lease program started in response to the invasion; the occupation, annexation, and widespread destruction of the regions housing Ukraine’s industrial heartland and mineral resources subsequent to the invasion; and the population drain as Ukrainians flee abroad to escape the invasion.
Remember, these are “facts” that Norton is advancing in support of his argument that the US has orchestrated the invasion in order to gain access to Ukraine’s wealth.
Even more perplexing, he then goes on to state, “The situation is even bleaker when one considers that, well before Russia’s February invasion, Ukraine was already the poorest country in Europe.”
Then why are the West planning on plundering Ukraine, Ben? Why?
Have I mentioned recently that Ben Norton really is just a f*cking moron?
Consider that we’re now one year into Putin’s three-day “Special Military Operation”! Everyone, including the Russian military, assumed that the Russian army, designed to hold back the combined forces of Europe and the US, would have taken Kyiv in three days - three weeks, max! What would be the point in provoking that escalation?
Who would’ve guessed that the Russian war machine would humiliate itself and become bogged down in a mire of ineptitude and corruption? Only to be picked off with store-bought drones. Remember that 40-mile convoy? Things were not meant to go that way.
So this second intentional provocation really does not make sense at all. But the provocation angle has always been a massive red-herring anyway. Let’s revisit some recent history and examine some potential “provocations” in Russia-Western relations:
- We could go back to that 2004 Ukrainian election with Russia poisoning the opponent of their boy Yanukovich and the subsequent vote rigging (aka Russia-backed coup).
- Or, in 2013, we could look at Russia pressuring then President Yanukovich to reject the EU against the will of the democratically elected parliament by entering a customs union with Russia instead. A provocative move against the EU?
- What about the invasion and subsequent annexation of Crimea? Not a provocative act?
- Russell and Norton seem to think US weapons are provocative, but what about the Russian weapons and soldiers poured into Ukraine’s Donbas since 2014? Including the Surface to Air Missile that brought down a Malaysian air passenger jet!
- Shooting down an airliner full of EU citizens, is that not provocative?
- Meanwhile, outside of Ukraine, in the UK, Russia’s attempted assassination in 2018 of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. You’d think the attempt would be provocation enough, but they killed an innocent bystander and sickened two others, including a police officer. Killing and maiming UK citizens on UK soil with chemical weapons, is that not a provocation? And on the back of the 2006 assassination of Alexander Litvinenko using a radioactive poison that contaminated half of London. How much provocation can one country take?
- Then there’s the 2014 attempted assassination of a Bulgarian (EU) citizen . Pretty provocative.
- And, of course, Russian interference in the 2016 US election. Was that not provocation?
But if you really want provocations, you only need to consider the Budapest Memorandum signed by the USA, Russia, and the UK, who, in return for Ukraine giving up nuclear weapons, vowed to defend Ukraine if they were ever attacked. The Russian invasion in 2014 isn’t just a provocation; it’s a legitimate casus belli!
Meanwhile, how did the West actually respond to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea?
Well, London continued to be a haven for Russian cash (as I discuss here), and the British made it abundantly clear to Russia that they were not going to give up that filthy lucre on behalf of Ukraine when a UK official “accidentally” revealed documents to that effect. Germany and the EU further deepened financial interdependence with Russia by continuing to build the Nordstream gas pipeline to import Russian gas and by-pass Ukraine. The US chose to pretty much ignore the largely performative sanctions they imposed on Russia, and Obama refused to provide lethal aid. There’s your provocation!
Truth is, Putin was handled with kid gloves - no one seriously wanted to provoke him. The Germans wanted Russia’s gas, the Brits wanted Russia’s cash, and Obama did not want to get bogged down in a proxy war - despite what the likes of Russell Brand and Ben Norton claim!
Far from provocation, It was this weak, disjointed response that emboldened Putin. As UK defense secretary Ben Wallace has said, “Putin believed that his forces would be welcomed with open arms, that Ukrainians would not fight, and that Western support would crumble”.
So, was Putin provoked into invading Ukraine in 2022? No. This argument ignores the fact that eight years of Russian provocations were met with appeasement from US and European leaders - it would be more accurate to describe the actions of Western leaders as “empowering” Putin’s invasion rather than provoking it. The provocation presented by Norton and Brand (arms sales to Ukraine in 2017) doesn’t make sense in the timeline of a 2022 invasion. They also don’t make sense in terms of Brand or Norton’s narrative - there was no need to escalate as they had an existing war, and the escalation renders Ukraine less appealing for plunder. But that doesn’t matter because, as we are about to see, the plunder narrative is entirely spurious.
Claim 4: The Ukrainian Government is collaborating with Western corporations who are seeking to “corporatize” Ukraine under the guise of providing humanitarian aid.
Russell and Norton push three main arguments in support of their position that Western corporations are being primed to plunder Ukraine: Government efforts to overhaul labor laws, Government initiatives to restructure Ukraine's public sector industries, and Ukrainian government attempts to promote inward foreign investment.
But first, let’s look at the concept that foreign investment is being presented as humanitarian aid. This is Russell’s assertion alone. He claims that we’re being fooled by the presentation of “a situation as a humanitarian crisis that needs a necessary resolution. Then powerful Elites and interests benefit from it”. What Russell is laying forth here is a popular conspiracy theorist trope - create a crisis, and then the people will welcome your solution, which was the goal all along. It’s popular with the likes of Alex Jones, who often misdescribe it as the Hegelian Dialectic. Russell asserts that “[US banks are] big globalist corporations who are now going to profit, while we're still being told they're doing this for humanitarian reasons”
Except we’re not being told they’re doing this for humanitarian reasons - investment is not aid. In fact, it’s almost entirely antithetical to aid. Russell has just built himself a strawman!
Aid is something that is given with no expectation of profit. Investment is spending resources on a project with the explicit expectation that you receive back more than you put in. Norton even links to an op-ed by Ukrainian President Zelinsky that explicitly separates aid from investment as follows: “Ukrainians are grateful for the support we have received from around the world, but today I am writing not to ask for favors … our new program, outlines investment opportunities that will [deliver] growth for those who… invest.”
This particular conspiracy theory is born of Russell Brand’s febrile imagination with its “purely ridiculous narratives that are fit only for children!”
Russell also claims that “Who do [the Ukrainians] bring in? Is it the Red Cross? No, it's BlackRock”. This is patently ridiculous; of course, the Red Cross is in Ukraine and has been since the 2014 hostilities, despite those hostilities being kept a secret, as Brand and Norton somehow believe. After the full-scale invasion of 2022, the Red Cross scaled up its response and now has 700 staff working in 10 locations across Ukraine. It beggars belief that Russell doesn’t think that the Red Cross was already working in Ukraine, or that he couldn’t even be bothered to check.
This is the workings of an idiot or a villain.
What of Ukrainian labor law? Norton has recruited a pet “economist”, Michael Hudson, who provides the following: "the new emergency anti-labor laws imposed by the Ukrainian government [are comparative] to the brutal neoliberal policies implemented by Chile’s far-right Pinochet dictatorship after a CIA-backed coup in 1973."
And: "You’ve got to read the Wall Street Journal editorial. It’s jaw dropping. It is absolutely – it’s like a parody of what a socialist would have written about how the class war would be put in into action by a fascist government. This is literally what fascism is."
All this from Zelinsky’s op-ed to the Wall Street Journal? “Literal fascism”! Must be quite the read. I, too, encourage you to read it (here). It’s quite short, only six paragraphs; if you do, you will find nothing that even approaches Michael Hudson’s hyperbole.
Hudson is another hack, like Norton, who spins pro-Russian propaganda cut from whole cloth. These are naked polemicizing lies, and, based on these lies, “economist” Michael Hudson is a despicable and disgraceful propagandist. The lies he pushes attempt to justify the slaughter of civilians. He is a f*cking ghoul.
Norton expands on his stance by claiming that “Zelensky’s government has imposed some of the world’s most aggressive anti-worker policies”. For this he grudgingly provides a second source, this time from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Why grudgingly? Well, Ben has previously claimed that they are CIA-funded to undermine overseas union movements and “foment murderous coups”, including the aforementioned fascist Chilean coup of 1973.
So, let’s get this straight, according to Ben Norton; the AFL-CIO is a CIA-funded organ of US overseas intrigue, an organization that is part of the monstrous apparatus that the USA uses to induce coups in pretty much every country you can think of in the last seventy years. But in the case of Ukraine, this tool of US-backed coups can be trusted in their opposition to Ukrainian labor reforms, despite the fact that imposing those reforms was the purpose of the US-backed coup?
Have I mentioned recently that Ben Norton really is a f*cking moron?
OK, it took me a long time to look into the underlying story - the CIA-backed source that Norton references didn’t provide a lot to go on (those CIA guys, always with their secrets!). Long story short, two labor laws; one was limited to the duration of the war, the other was planned to be permanent. The Unions didn’t like that permanence and recruited assistance from international unions to apply pressure on the Ukrainian government from outside (hence the AFL-CIO). Ukrainian lawmakers ultimately back down and limit the second law to the duration of the war. Unions still not 100% happy, as is their want, but not even the Ukrainian trade unions, in any of the articles, letters, and press releases that I read, claimed that these laws were “some of the world’s most aggressive anti-worker policies,” This is just more hyperbole and polemicizing from Norton, who feels free to lecture a former imperial property on how it should embrace the politics of its former imperial masters.
Norton claims that the laws would impact 73% of Ukrainian workers. The reason for that number? That is the percentage of the working population of Ukraine that is employed by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs - 250 employees or less) that this law applies to. Ukraine’s economy is somewhat skewed towards small businesses; in 2021, the European average for the working population employed by SMEs was 64%, and the average for member states of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is 68% (the US is only 42%!). The Ukrainian government is taking a strategic approach to stimulate SMEs as the largest block of employers in the country, with policies that they believe will ultimately increase overall employment in Ukraine, which has been decimated by Russia's invasion.
But how does that focus on small business tie in with Norton’s claims that “under Western tutelage”, Ukraine is trying to accommodate huge Western corporations and has “outsourced its economic policy to BlackRock… which manages more than $8 trillion in assets”? It doesn’t! That’s how.
Incidentally, Norton goes on to say of BlackRock that it is “one of the ‘big three’ US asset managers which are the largest shareholders in nearly 90% of S&P 500 companies”. Benny, Bubala, you’ve already established that you’re a big bad communist who doesn’t like such capitalist concepts as private ownership and certainly not the stock market. Complaining about the largest shareholders in the S&P 500 is a bit like that old joke of the guy complaining about the small portions in a restaurant whose awful food made him sick!
Besides, settle Petal, those S&P 500 companies have literally hundreds of shareholders. To be the largest shareholder, you typically “only” need 5%-10%. And that “$8 trillion in assets” number is a wee bit out of date; by my count, as of March 2022, the so-called “big three” of BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street managed about $21.7 trillion. A big number! To put it in perspective, the top 10 US asset management firms manage $41.6 trillion between them. In fact, a lot of the kerfuffle about “the big three” is, at least in part, being fueled by their competitors who mostly offer Actively Managed investment funds, which rip-off, sorry!, “charge” customers a management fee, versus the “big three” who primarily offer Passively Managed investment funds that track indexes (like the S&P 500, hence their dominant positions there), and don’t require managers, therefore requiring smaller fees from customers. I’m surprised that someone who runs a website called “Geopolitical Economy Report” with its own pet “economist” in the form of Michael Hudson wouldn’t have better insight into simple economic concepts. But then again, have I said recently that Ben Norton really is a f*cking moron?
A further demonstration of the “big three” as largest shareholder can be gleaned by looking at the UK’s Barclays Bank. In Part One of this blog post series, we saw how, despite telling people to boycott Barclays because they do business in Israel, Russell has a mortgage with them for his Rumble Studio, which makes Russell a complete and utter Barclays Banker! If we look at Barclays' ownership, we see that the largest shareholder is the Qatar Investment Authority (those wacky guys!), at 6.48%. However, if you add up the various BlackRock and Vanguard shareholders, you get to 10.9%! In fact, you don’t even need the arbitrary construct of the big three, BlackRock subsidiaries alone add up to 7.79%, making them the largest shareholder.
Oh no! The globalists are coming after Russell’s studio! Lol.
But wait a minute. We saw in Part One that Russell doesn’t even need a mortgage. He got the mortgage despite having something like $6 million lying around in petty cash. What if this mortgage is just a way for Russell’s corporate overlord, BlackRock, to covertly fund him? OH! MY! GOD! Russell Brand is controlled opposition! Lol.
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| Russell Brand is Owned by BlackRock!!!111OneOneOne!!"2111 |
So, tin foil hats aside, the labor reforms are not exactly aimed at the international mega-corporations that are apparently poised to pounce on Ukraine, instead, they aim to stimulate growth in the Small and Medium Business sector of Ukraine’s economy. But what about Government initiatives to restructure Ukraine's public sector industries?
Norton seems to have developed an obsession with the perfidious URC (Ukraine Reform Conference, renamed as the Ukraine Recovery Conference after the Russian invasion of 2022.). From whose promotional materials he likes to cherry pick supposedly sinister phrases such as ”strengthening the market economy”, “decentralization”, “privatization”, “land reform”, “Euro-Atlantic integration” while skipping over such items as: “democracy and the rule of law”, “combating corruption”, “ensuring the independence and effective function of anti-corruption institutions”, “criminalization of unlawful enrichment”, and “etc”.
The conference is an effort by Ukraine to further engage with the foreign governments and supernational bodies (i.e. EU and NATO) that Ukraine is trying to court as allies. You know - the ones that aren’t their former imperial masters, or didn’t poison a presidential candidate in 2004, or invade them in 2014 and then annex Crimea, and then invade them again in 2022. Can’t imagine why they would want to align themselves that way!
It’s not uncommon for countries to hold conferences and summits with the intention of increasing international coordination and cooperation. Take, for example, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, which is held biannually, or the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. And, of course, the BRICS summits, which have been held annually since 2009 to build on relationships between Brazil, Russia, India, and China (with South Africa added in 2010), and has developed into a cohesive geopolitical bloc - in much the same way as Ukraine would like to integrate and join the “cohesive geopolitical bloc” that is represented by the EU and NATO. And if you want something more focused, here’s Ukraine’s neighbor Poland holding conferences to promote inward investment, and even Belarus!.
Norton paints the URC as some sinister organization where successive Ukrainian governments receive instructions from their Western overlords to privatize Ukraine’s remaining national industries in an orgy of corporate opportunism! He fails to mention that “Privatisation and State Owned Enterprise Reform” ranks at number 5 out of 6 of the stated priorities, the others being “Pension Reform”, “Education Reform”, “Healthcare Reform”, “Public Administration Reform”, and “Agriculture Sector Reform”.
Russell makes a big deal of Ukraine “stripping publically owned assets… built using public money” as being “a fantastic way to make profit”. But of course, that’s another of his ridiculous narratives that are fit only for children.
Ukraine’s SOEs are a holdover from the Soviet era - they managed to escape the Shock Doctrine of Brand’s pall and Disaster Capitalist Jeffery Sachs - and, as a result, Ukraine has about 3,500 state-owned enterprises (SOEs). To put that in perspective, neighboring Poland has 55, Lithuania has 91, Sweden has 46, Canada 50, and Australia only 9.
More than 50% of Ukraine’s SOEs are now defunct, nearly 600 (17% of the total) because they are in territories temporarily occupied by Russia. Prior to the 2022 invasion, in January 2021, only 20% of the total (723) had been earmarked for sale. The Ukrainian government website currently lists 178 SOEs as being prepared for auction. You can view them here and here. Where you will find such choice pickings as the Korostyshiv Distillery - who wants government-brewed liquor?! Russell doesn’t even trust the government to regulate medicine, but he’s happy for them to make Victory Gin?
If that doesn’t quite take your fancy, you could always try the Zarubynskyi Distillery, or the Zirne Distillery, or the Novosukhanivka Distillery. Quite a lot of distilleries now I come to think of it! Well, if you’re not into spirituous liquor, you could always try Kotovsky Winery, but if fiz is more your thing, I’m afraid you’ve missed the Odesa Sparkling Wine Factory.
Now, if you’re an avowed communist, like Norton (we’ve already talked about Russell’s lack of communist credibility in Part one), then you are ideologically averse to the concept of private enterprise, and that’s your prerogative. But don’t present ideological screeds as objective journalism. And bear in mind that having spent more than seventy years under Soviet rule, Ukraine has first-hand experience of communism - they have rejected that system, as is their prerogative. And they can do without some trustafarian yank LARPing as a journalist while he “roughs it” in Nicaragua or some over-privileged British former funny-man, the wealth-hoarding Barclays Banking, Squire of Henley-on-Thames, lecturing them on the subject either.
But with such rich pickings, it’s obvious that the hordes of Western globalist corporations are beating a path to snap up these publicly owned goodies! Surprising, then, that the Ukrainian government even needs to ask for investment, yet, according to Brand and Norton, that’s precisely what they are doing. “Zelinsky Sends Love Letter to US Corporations!”. “[Zelinsky’s] speech sounded less like the words of a stateman [sic] and more like an advertisement by a used car salesman – except he is not selling cars; he is selling his country to foreign mega-corporations.”. Aaaaaah! What a villain!
Imagine courting foreign investment in your own country! Who does that? I mean, except for pretty much every government in existence. For example, there was a period of time whenever I tuned into NPR that I would get adverts for “Invest Northern Ireland”. Any number of countries do it. Not just countries either, even Oxfordshire, the county seat of Russell Brand, Squire of Henley-on-Thames, does it.
Norton’s beloved Communist China does it! Here, from CNBC “China is rolling out the red carpet to attract foreign executives” and, here’s the South China Morning Post “China Exports [and] foreign investment key to economic growth, Xi Jinping says”. Here’s the Chinese government itself explaining that foreign investment is one of the China’s eight priorities for the year. And here, Chinese ministers meeting with overseas companies, including AstraZeneca (don’t tell Russell!). And if Ben does want to take advantage of personal investing opportunities in communist China, he need look no further than BlackRock’s “iShares MSCI China A” ETF, which tracks an index of Chinese equities traded on the Shanghai stock exchange! Or there are the funds run by Morgan Stanley, or Goldman Sachs, part of what Russell, in the video, calls “the Avengers of big globalist corporations”.
Obviously, the investment sentiment in Russia has soured recently, what with the sanctions and all, but 1,242 foreign companies CONTINUE to operate in Russia!
But what all of this fails to address is why Ukraine needs to perform any outreach at all? I mean, if the West is going to go to all this bother of intentionally provoking a war with Russia (Russia, no less! A nuclear superpower!) in order to provide cover for Western corporations to move into Ukraine, might it not have been a good idea to get some of those corporations on-side first? Once again, with the “Six P’s” of effective project management - Proper Planning Prevents P*ss-Poor Performance!
And, if Western corporations did want to plunder Ukraine, why did they need a war? Ukraine has been trying to join the EU since before 2012 (remember, the cause for the Euromaidan in 2014 was the President’s torpedoing of the EU association agreement?). Would simply rushing Ukraine through the EU membership process not be simpler and less risky than starting a war that has the potential to escalate to a nuclear confrontation?
So, where does that leave the claim that the Ukrainian Government is collaborating with Western corporations who are seeking to “corporatize” Ukraine under the guise of providing humanitarian aid? The normal workings of a Government doing exactly the same thing as pretty much every other government on the planet - as would be patently clear to anyone who sat down and thought about it for five minutes.
And where does this leave Brand’s conspiracy theory as a whole, then:
- The 2014 Euromaidan was not a “US-backed coup”; the president fled the country after his crackdown on peaceful demonstrations resulted in the massacre of a bunch of kids participating in a grassroots protest.
- The US and EU governments, along with the Western press, did not try to obscure the fighting in Ukraine after 2014. Doesn’t make any sense, even in terms of the overarching conspiracy theory being pushed.
- The West did not provoke Putin into invading Ukraine. Unless by “provoke”, you mean “empower” through eight years of appeasement accompanied by deepening financial and economic entanglements.
- The Ukrainian government is not selling off Ukraine to Western corporations under the guise of providing aid - they are seeking inward investment, which is the opposite of aid, and is pretty much what all governments do. Including Communist China!
The fact that the individual components of the conspiracy theory don’t hold water should not distract from the fact that, when combined, the entire conspiracy theory is an incoherent mess. And just as attempts to rob the Ukrainian people of their agency in the 2014 Euromaidan are offensive to the memory of the 108 people gunned down by the pro-Russian government, the continued efforts of bad faith actors like Brand and Norton are an insult to the hundreds of thousands of people feared dead for no reason beyond one person’s imperial ambitions for Russia.
Norton’s purpose is clear: he’s seeking to smear the Ukrainian government and people because it fits in with his ongoing agenda of vilifying the West while providing cover for Russian and Chinese authoritarian regimes. But what of Brand? We’ve already seen that Norton is a fool, but who’s the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?
But what do you think? Is Ben Norton a f*cking moron, or is he merely a mouth-breathing dolt who is incapable of logical reasoning? Is Russell Brand a “fool’s fool”, or is he a hateful tool of oppression who spouts conspiracy theories to cover for the massacre of thousands of civilians and the ongoing genocide being affected by Russian troops and PMCs? And why did Russell only publish this video on YouTube and not as part of his Rumble output? Is he afraid that some free speech won’t go down too well with his new right-wing chums? And why has it taken me three posts to mention that? And why didn’t I say anything about Russell’s comments about Russia having ties with Ukraine “ethnically, in some cases”? I mean, yikes! Is he really repeating Russian propaganda lines justifying ethnic cleansing, genocide, and mass child abduction now?
But whatever you do think, be sure to Like, Comment, and Subscribe! Cling-a-ding-ding!
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