Back In The USSR

Well, it sure seems like things haven’t changed much in 25 years:

At least 22 people have died in renewed clashes between protesters and police in central Kiev after a truce agreed on Wednesday broke down, eyewitnesses say.

Witnesses reported live rounds, petrol bombs and water cannon at the main protest site, Independence Square.

A meeting between EU foreign ministers and President Viktor Yanukovych is now under way, officials say, contradicting earlier reports that the ministers had flown out without seeing him.

The EU will discuss sanctions later.

The protestors are pretty smart, too. They set up a makeshift mortuary/field hospital in the lobby of the hotel where foreign journalists covering the protests are staying.

The protests, nominally aimed at the Ukraine president, Viktor Yanukovych, are really aimed at Vladimir Putin and Russia, as Russia has strongly signaled their intent to dominate Ukrainian governance in a form of hegemony not seen since the Soviet Union lined tanks up along the Czechoslovak border.

This was the nation that Edward Snowden picked as a bastion of human rights and self-governance? It is to LOL.

 

 

In Other News, Dog Bites Man

North Korea is an oppressive, tyrannical, and genocidal regime. One can only hope that, between rehab and this report, Dennis Rodman will stop making an ass of himself:

(CNN) -- A stunning catalog of torture and the widespread abuse of even the weakest of North Koreans reveal a portrait of a brutal state "that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world," a United Nations panel reported Monday.

North Korean leaders employ murder, torture, slavery, sexual violence, mass starvation and other abuses as tools to prop up the state and terrorize "the population into submission," the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights (COI) in North Korea said in its report

The commission said it would refer its findings to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for possible prosecution. It also sent a letter warning North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he could face prosecution for crimes against humanity, and said other options include establishing of an ad hoc tribunal by the United Nations.

Some of the victims drew sketches. You probably don’t want to try to find them online until you’ve digested any food you planned on eating.

In what may have been the only real surprise in the entire report, the UN took pains to point out China’s complicity in the violence and oppression done by the North Korea regime, in that they have forcibly returned refugees from the PRK.

In many ways, some of the punishments sound straight out of 1984, being tortured and imprisoned for thought-crimes like watching soap operas or trying to find food.

Many comparisons are made between Obama and Hitler by rightwingers. The next one who makes that comparison ought to be air-dropped into North Korea.