Why The Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault

According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putin’s decision to order Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine.

But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine -- beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004 -- were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president -- which he rightly labeled a “coup” -- was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West.

Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly. Elites in the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics. They tend to believe that the logic of realism holds little relevance in the twenty-first century and that Europe can be kept whole and free on the basis of such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy.

But this grand scheme went awry in Ukraine. The crisis there shows that realpolitik remains relevant -- and states that ignore it do so at their own peril. U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border. Now that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater mistake to continue this misbegotten policy.

U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border.

THE WESTERN AFFRONT

As the Cold War came to a close, Soviet leaders preferred that U.S. forces remain in Europe and NATO stay intact, an arrangement they thought would keep a reunified Germany pacified. But they and their Russian successors did not want NATO to grow any larger and assumed that Western diplomats understood their concerns. The Clinton administration evidently thought otherwise, and in the mid-1990s, it began pushing for NATO to expand.

The first round of enlargement took place in 1999 and brought in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. The second occurred in 2004; it included Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Moscow complained bitterly from the start. During NATO’s 1995 bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs, for example, Russian President Boris Yeltsin said, “This is the first sign of what could happen when NATO comes right up to the Russian Federation’s borders. ... The flame of war could burst out across the whole of Europe.” But the Russians were too weak at the time to derail NATO’s eastward movement -- which, at any rate, did not look so threatening, since none of the new members shared a border with Russia, save for the tiny Baltic countries.

Then NATO began looking further east. At its April 2008 summit in Bucharest, the alliance considered admitting Georgia and Ukraine. The George W. Bush administration supported doing so, but France and Germany opposed the move for fear that it would unduly antagonize Russia. In the end, NATO’s members reached a compromise: the alliance did not begin the formal process leading to membership, but it issued a statement endorsing the aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine and boldly declaring, “These countries will become members of NATO.”

Moscow, however, did not see the outcome as much of a compromise. Alexander Grushko, then Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said, “Georgia’s and Ukraine’s membership in the alliance is a huge strategic mistake which would have most serious consequences for pan-European security.” Putin maintained that admitting those two countries to NATO would represent a “direct threat” to Russia. One Russian newspaper reported that Putin, while speaking with Bush, “very transparently hinted that if Ukraine was accepted into NATO, it would cease to exist.”

Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008 should have dispelled any remaining doubts about Putin’s determination to prevent Georgia and Ukraine from joining NATO. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who was deeply committed to bringing his country into NATO, had decided in the summer of 2008 to reincorporate two separatist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But Putin sought to keep Georgia weak and divided -- and out of NATO. After fighting broke out between the Georgian government and South Ossetian separatists, Russian forces took control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Moscow had made its point. Yet despite this clear warning, NATO never publicly abandoned its goal of bringing Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance. And NATO expansion continued marching forward, with Albania and Croatia becoming members in 2009.

The EU, too, has been marching eastward. In May 2008, it unveiled its Eastern Partnership initiative, a program to foster prosperity in such countries as Ukraine and integrate them into the EU economy. Not surprisingly, Russian leaders view the plan as hostile to their country’s interests. This past February, before Yanukovych was forced from office, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the EU of trying to create a “sphere of influence” in eastern Europe. In the eyes of Russian leaders, EU expansion is a stalking horse for NATO expansion.

The West’s final tool for peeling Kiev away from Moscow has been its efforts to spread Western values and promote democracy in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, a plan that often entails funding pro-Western individuals and organizations. Victoria Nuland, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, estimated in December 2013 that the United States had invested more than $5 billion since 1991 to help Ukraine achieve “the future it deserves.” As part of that effort, the U.S. government has bankrolled the National Endowment for Democracy. The nonprofit foundation has funded more than 60 projects aimed at promoting civil society in Ukraine, and the NED’s president, Carl Gershman, has called that country “the biggest prize.” After Yanukovych won Ukraine’s presidential election in February 2010, the NED decided he was undermining its goals, and so it stepped up its efforts to support the opposition and strengthen the country’s democratic institutions.

When Russian leaders look at Western social engineering in Ukraine, they worry that their country might be next. And such fears are hardly groundless. In September 2013, Gershman wrote in The Washington Post, “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents.” He added: “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

CREATING A CRISIS

Imagine the American outrage if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico.

The West’s triple package of policies -- NATO enlargement, EU expansion, and democracy promotion -- added fuel to a fire waiting to ignite. The spark came in November 2013, when Yanukovych rejected a major economic deal he had been negotiating with the EU and decided to accept a $15 billion Russian counteroffer instead. That decision gave rise to antigovernment demonstrations that escalated over the following three months and that by mid-February had led to the deaths of some one hundred protesters. Western emissaries hurriedly flew to Kiev to resolve the crisis. On February 21, the government and the opposition struck a deal that allowed Yanukovych to stay in power until new elections were held. But it immediately fell apart, and Yanukovych fled to Russia the next day. The new government in Kiev was pro-Western and anti-Russian to the core, and it contained four high-ranking members who could legitimately be labeled neofascists.

Although the full extent of U.S. involvement has not yet come to light, it is clear that Washington backed the coup. Nuland and Republican Senator John McCain participated in antigovernment demonstrations, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, proclaimed after Yanukovych’s toppling that it was “a day for the history books.” As a leaked telephone recording revealed, Nuland had advocated regime change and wanted the Ukrainian politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk to become prime minister in the new government, which he did. No wonder Russians of all persuasions think the West played a role in Yanukovych’s ouster.

For Putin, the time to act against Ukraine and the West had arrived. Shortly after February 22, he ordered Russian forces to take Crimea from Ukraine, and soon after that, he incorporated it into Russia. The task proved relatively easy, thanks to the thousands of Russian troops already stationed at a naval base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Crimea also made for an easy target since ethnic Russians compose roughly 60 percent of its population. Most of them wanted out of Ukraine.

Next, Putin put massive pressure on the new government in Kiev to discourage it from siding with the West against Moscow, making it clear that he would wreck Ukraine as a functioning state before he would allow it to become a Western stronghold on Russia’s doorstep. Toward that end, he has provided advisers, arms, and diplomatic support to the Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, who are pushing the country toward civil war. He has massed a large army on the Ukrainian border, threatening to invade if the government cracks down on the rebels. And he has sharply raised the price of the natural gas Russia sells to Ukraine and demanded payment for past exports. Putin is playing hardball.

THE DIAGNOSIS

Putin’s actions should be easy to comprehend. A huge expanse of flat land that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike at Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a buffer state of enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow’s mortal enemy until recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West.

Washington may not like Moscow’s position, but it should understand the logic behind it. This is Geopolitics 101: great powers are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory. After all, the United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, much less on its borders. Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico in it. Logic aside, Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine unacceptable, along with any effort to turn those countries against Russia -- a message that the 2008 Russian-Georgian war also made crystal clear.

Officials from the United States and its European allies contend that they tried hard to assuage Russian fears and that Moscow should understand that NATO has no designs on Russia. In addition to continually denying that its expansion was aimed at containing Russia, the alliance has never permanently deployed military forces in its new member states. In 2002, it even created a body called the NATO-Russia Council in an effort to foster cooperation. To further mollify Russia, the United States announced in 2009 that it would deploy its new missile defense system on warships in European waters, at least initially, rather than on Czech or Polish territory. But none of these measures worked; the Russians remained steadfastly opposed to NATO enlargement, especially into Georgia and Ukraine. And it is the Russians, not the West, who ultimately get to decide what counts as a threat to them.

To understand why the West, especially the United States, failed to understand that its Ukraine policy was laying the groundwork for a major clash with Russia, one must go back to the mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration began advocating NATO expansion. Pundits advanced a variety of arguments for and against enlargement, but there was no consensus on what to do. Most eastern European émigrés in the United States and their relatives, for example, strongly supported expansion, because they wanted NATO to protect such countries as Hungary and Poland. A few realists also favored the policy because they thought Russia still needed to be contained.

But most realists opposed expansion, in the belief that a declining great power with an aging population and a one-dimensional economy did not in fact need to be contained. And they feared that enlargement would only give Moscow an incentive to cause trouble in eastern Europe. The U.S. diplomat George Kennan articulated this perspective in a 1998 interview, shortly after the U.S. Senate approved the first round of NATO expansion. “I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies,” he said. “I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anyone else.”

The United States and its allies should abandon their plan to westernize Ukraine and instead aim to make it a neutral buffer.

Most liberals, on the other hand, favored enlargement, including many key members of the Clinton administration. They believed that the end of the Cold War had fundamentally transformed international politics and that a new, postnational order had replaced the realist logic that used to govern Europe. The United States was not only the “indispensable nation,” as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put it; it was also a benign hegemon and thus unlikely to be viewed as a threat in Moscow. The aim, in essence, was to make the entire continent look like western Europe.

And so the United States and its allies sought to promote democracy in the countries of eastern Europe, increase economic interdependence among them, and embed them in international institutions. Having won the debate in the United States, liberals had little difficulty convincing their European allies to support NATO enlargement. After all, given the EU’s past achievements, Europeans were even more wedded than Americans to the idea that geopolitics no longer mattered and that an all-inclusive liberal order could maintain peace in Europe.

So thoroughly did liberals come to dominate the discourse about European security during the first decade of this century that even as the alliance adopted an open-door policy of growth, NATO expansion faced little realist opposition. The liberal worldview is now accepted dogma among U.S. officials. In March, for example, President Barack Obama delivered a speech about Ukraine in which he talked repeatedly about “the ideals” that motivate Western policy and how those ideals “have often been threatened by an older, more traditional view of power.” Secretary of State John Kerry’s response to the Crimea crisis reflected this same perspective: “You just don’t in the twenty-first century behave in nineteenth-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext.”

In essence, the two sides have been operating with different playbooks: Putin and his compatriots have been thinking and acting according to realist dictates, whereas their Western counterparts have been adhering to liberal ideas about international politics. The result is that the United States and its allies unknowingly provoked a major crisis over Ukraine.

BLAME GAME

In that same 1998 interview, Kennan predicted that NATO expansion would provoke a crisis, after which the proponents of expansion would “say that we always told you that is how the Russians are.” As if on cue, most Western officials have portrayed Putin as the real culprit in the Ukraine predicament. In March, according to The New York Times, German Chancellor Angela Merkel implied that Putin was irrational, telling Obama that he was “in another world.” Although Putin no doubt has autocratic tendencies, no evidence supports the charge that he is mentally unbalanced. On the contrary: he is a first-class strategist who should be feared and respected by anyone challenging him on foreign policy.

Other analysts allege, more plausibly, that Putin regrets the demise of the Soviet Union and is determined to reverse it by expanding Russia’s borders. According to this interpretation, Putin, having taken Crimea, is now testing the waters to see if the time is right to conquer Ukraine, or at least its eastern part, and he will eventually behave aggressively toward other countries in Russia’s neighborhood. For some in this camp, Putin represents a modern-day Adolf Hitler, and striking any kind of deal with him would repeat the mistake of Munich. Thus, NATO must admit Georgia and Ukraine to contain Russia before it dominates its neighbors and threatens western Europe.

This argument falls apart on close inspection. If Putin were committed to creating a greater Russia, signs of his intentions would almost certainly have arisen before February 22. But there is virtually no evidence that he was bent on taking Crimea, much less any other territory in Ukraine, before that date. Even Western leaders who supported NATO expansion were not doing so out of a fear that Russia was about to use military force. Putin’s actions in Crimea took them by complete surprise and appear to have been a spontaneous reaction to Yanukovych’s ouster. Right afterward, even Putin said he opposed Crimean secession, before quickly changing his mind.

Besides, even if it wanted to, Russia lacks the capability to easily conquer and annex eastern Ukraine, much less the entire country. Roughly 15 million people -- one-third of Ukraine’s population -- live between the Dnieper River, which bisects the country, and the Russian border. An overwhelming majority of those people want to remain part of Ukraine and would surely resist a Russian occupation. Furthermore, Russia’s mediocre army, which shows few signs of turning into a modern Wehrmacht, would have little chance of pacifying all of Ukraine. Moscow is also poorly positioned to pay for a costly occupation; its weak economy would suffer even more in the face of the resulting sanctions.

But even if Russia did boast a powerful military machine and an impressive economy, it would still probably prove unable to successfully occupy Ukraine. One need only consider the Soviet and U.S. experiences in Afghanistan, the U.S. experiences in Vietnam and Iraq, and the Russian experience in Chechnya to be reminded that military occupations usually end badly. Putin surely understands that trying to subdue Ukraine would be like swallowing a porcupine. His response to events there has been defensive, not offensive.

A WAY OUT

Given that most Western leaders continue to deny that Putin’s behavior might be motivated by legitimate security concerns, it is unsurprising that they have tried to modify it by doubling down on their existing policies and have punished Russia to deter further aggression. Although Kerry has maintained that “all options are on the table,” neither the United States nor its NATO allies are prepared to use force to defend Ukraine. The West is relying instead on economic sanctions to coerce Russia into ending its support for the insurrection in eastern Ukraine. In July, the United States and the EU put in place their third round of limited sanctions, targeting mainly high-level individuals closely tied to the Russian government and some high-profile banks, energy companies, and defense firms. They also threatened to unleash another, tougher round of sanctions, aimed at whole sectors of the Russian economy.

Such measures will have little effect. Harsh sanctions are likely off the table anyway; western European countries, especially Germany, have resisted imposing them for fear that Russia might retaliate and cause serious economic damage within the EU. But even if the United States could convince its allies to enact tough measures, Putin would probably not alter his decision-making. History shows that countries will absorb enormous amounts of punishment in order to protect their core strategic interests. There is no reason to think Russia represents an exception to this rule.

Western leaders have also clung to the provocative policies that precipitated the crisis in the first place. In April, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden met with Ukrainian legislators and told them, “This is a second opportunity to make good on the original promise made by the Orange Revolution.” John Brennan, the director of the CIA, did not help things when, that same month, he visited Kiev on a trip the White House said was aimed at improving security cooperation with the Ukrainian government.

The EU, meanwhile, has continued to push its Eastern Partnership. In March, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, summarized EU thinking on Ukraine, saying, “We have a debt, a duty of solidarity with that country, and we will work to have them as close as possible to us.” And sure enough, on June 27, the EU and Ukraine signed the economic agreement that Yanukovych had fatefully rejected seven months earlier. Also in June, at a meeting of NATO members’ foreign ministers, it was agreed that the alliance would remain open to new members, although the foreign ministers refrained from mentioning Ukraine by name. “No third country has a veto over NATO enlargement,” announced Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s secretary-general. The foreign ministers also agreed to support various measures to improve Ukraine’s military capabilities in such areas as command and control, logistics, and cyberdefense. Russian leaders have naturally recoiled at these actions; the West’s response to the crisis will only make a bad situation worse.

There is a solution to the crisis in Ukraine, however -- although it would require the West to think about the country in a fundamentally new way. The United States and its allies should abandon their plan to westernize Ukraine and instead aim to make it a neutral buffer between NATO and Russia, akin to Austria’s position during the Cold War. Western leaders should acknowledge that Ukraine matters so much to Putin that they cannot support an anti-Russian regime there. This would not mean that a future Ukrainian government would have to be pro-Russian or anti-NATO. On the contrary, the goal should be a sovereign Ukraine that falls in neither the Russian nor the Western camp.

To achieve this end, the United States and its allies should publicly rule out NATO’s expansion into both Georgia and Ukraine. The West should also help fashion an economic rescue plan for Ukraine funded jointly by the EU, the International Monetary Fund, Russia, and the United States -- a proposal that Moscow should welcome, given its interest in having a prosperous and stable Ukraine on its western flank. And the West should considerably limit its social-engineering efforts inside Ukraine. It is time to put an end to Western support for another Orange Revolution. Nevertheless, U.S. and European leaders should encourage Ukraine to respect minority rights, especially the language rights of its Russian speakers.

Some may argue that changing policy toward Ukraine at this late date would seriously damage U.S. credibility around the world. There would undoubtedly be certain costs, but the costs of continuing a misguided strategy would be much greater. Furthermore, other countries are likely to respect a state that learns from its mistakes and ultimately devises a policy that deals effectively with the problem at hand. That option is clearly open to the United States.

One also hears the claim that Ukraine has the right to determine whom it wants to ally with and the Russians have no right to prevent Kiev from joining the West. This is a dangerous way for Ukraine to think about its foreign policy choices. The sad truth is that might often makes right when great-power politics are at play. Abstract rights such as self-determination are largely meaningless when powerful states get into brawls with weaker states. Did Cuba have the right to form a military alliance with the Soviet Union during the Cold War? The United States certainly did not think so, and the Russians think the same way about Ukraine joining the West. It is in Ukraine’s interest to understand these facts of life and tread carefully when dealing with its more powerful neighbor.

Even if one rejects this analysis, however, and believes that Ukraine has the right to petition to join the EU and NATO, the fact remains that the United States and its European allies have the right to reject these requests. There is no reason that the West has to accommodate Ukraine if it is bent on pursuing a wrong-headed foreign policy, especially if its defense is not a vital interest. Indulging the dreams of some Ukrainians is not worth the animosity and strife it will cause, especially for the Ukrainian people.

Of course, some analysts might concede that NATO handled relations with Ukraine poorly and yet still maintain that Russia constitutes an enemy that will only grow more formidable over time -- and that the West therefore has no choice but to continue its present policy. But this viewpoint is badly mistaken. Russia is a declining power, and it will only get weaker with time. Even if Russia were a rising power, moreover, it would still make no sense to incorporate Ukraine into NATO. The reason is simple: the United States and its European allies do not consider Ukraine to be a core strategic interest, as their unwillingness to use military force to come to its aid has proved. It would therefore be the height of folly to create a new NATO member that the other members have no intention of defending. NATO has expanded in the past because liberals assumed the alliance would never have to honor its new security guarantees, but Russia’s recent power play shows that granting Ukraine NATO membership could put Russia and the West on a collision course.

Sticking with the current policy would also complicate Western relations with Moscow on other issues. The United States needs Russia’s assistance to withdraw U.S. equipment from Afghanistan through Russian territory, reach a nuclear agreement with Iran, and stabilize the situation in Syria. In fact, Moscow has helped Washington on all three of these issues in the past; in the summer of 2013, it was Putin who pulled Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire by forging the deal under which Syria agreed to relinquish its chemical weapons, thereby avoiding the U.S. military strike that Obama had threatened. The United States will also someday need Russia’s help containing a rising China. Current U.S. policy, however, is only driving Moscow and Beijing closer together.

The United States and its European allies now face a choice on Ukraine. They can continue their current policy, which will exacerbate hostilities with Russia and devastate Ukraine in the process -- a scenario in which everyone would come out a loser. Or they can switch gears and work to create a prosperous but neutral Ukraine, one that does not threaten Russia and allows the West to repair its relations with Moscow. With that approach, all sides would win.

Read more »

The Top 10 Liberal Superstitions

A hallmark of progressive politics is the ability to hold fervent beliefs, in defiance of evidence, that explain how the world works—and why liberal solutions must be adopted. Such political superstitions take on a new prominence during campaign seasons as Democratic candidates trot out applause lines to rally their progressive base and as the electorate considers their voting records. Here’s a Top 10 list of liberal superstitions on prominent display during the midterm election campaign:

1. Spending more money improves education. The U.S. spent $12,608 per student in 2010—more than double the figure, in inflation-adjusted dollars, spent in 1970—and spending on public elementary and secondary schools has surpassed $600 billion. How’s that working out? Adjusted state SAT scores have declined on average 3% since the 1970s, as the Cato Institute’s Andrew Coulson found in a March report.

No better news in the international rankings: The Program for International Student Assessment reports that in 2012 American 15-year-olds placed in the middle of the pack, alongside peers from Slovakia—which shells out half as much money as the U.S. per student.

Someone might mention this to North Carolina Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan, who is knocking State House Speaker Thom Tillis for cutting $500 million from schools. Per-pupil K-12 spending has increased every year since Mr. Tillis became speaker in 2011, and most of what Ms. Hagan is selling as “cuts” came from community colleges and universities, not the local middle school. Mr. Coulson’s Cato study notes that North Carolina has about doubled per-pupil education spending since 1972, which has done precisely nothing for the state’s adjusted SAT scores.


2. Government spending stimulates the economy. Case in point is the $830 billion 2009 stimulus bill, touted by the Obama administration as necessary for keeping unemployment below 8%. Result: four years of average unemployment above 8%. Federal outlays soared in 2009 to $3.5 trillion—a big enough bump to do the Keynesian trick of boosting aggregate demand—but all we got was this lousy 2% growth and a new costume for Army Corps of Engineers mascot Bobber the Water Safety Dog. Every Senate Democrat voted for the blowout, including the 11 now up for re-election who were in Congress when it passed.

3. Republican candidates always have a big spending advantage over Democrats. Majority Leader Harry Reid took to the Senate floor recently to deride the Koch brothers as “radical billionaires” who are “attempting to buy our democracy.” Yet the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has raked in $127 million this cycle, about $30 million more than the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Democrats have aired more TV ads than Republicans in several battleground states, according to analysis by the Center for Public Integrity. Meanwhile, Mr. Reid’s Senate Majority PAC has raised more than $50 million. As this newspaper has reported, between 2005 and 2011, labor unions—linchpins of the Democratic Party—spent $4.4 billion on politics, far outstripping any conservative rival.

4. Raising the minimum wage helps the poor. The president wants to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 from $7.25, with the tagline “Let’s give America a raise.” The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the hike would cost 500,000 jobs, one blow to the low-wage earners it claims to help. Employment aside, only 18% of the earnings benefits of a $10.10 hike would flow to people living below the poverty line, according to analysis from University of California-Irvine economist David Neumark. Nearly 30% of the benefits would go to families three times above the poverty line or higher, in part because half of America’s poor families have no wage earners. Minimum-wage increases help some poor families—at the expense of other poor families.

You won’t hear that from Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, who in September lived on $79 for a week to show his public-relations solidarity with minimum-wage earners. Keep in mind: Only 4.7% of minimum-wage earners are adults working full-time trying to support a family, and nearly all would be eligible for the earned-income tax credit and other welfare programs.
 
5. Global warming is causing increasingly violent weather. Tell that to Floridians, who are enjoying the ninth consecutive season without a hurricane landfall. The Atlantic hurricane season in 2013 was the least active in 30 years. Oh, and global temperatures have not increased for 15 years.
Still, something must be done! On Monday, the Hill reported that an internal memo circulating among five environmental groups detailed plans for spending to support candidates “who want to act” to combat climate change. “We are on track to spend more than $85 million overall including more than $40 million in just six Senate races,” the memo said. The beneficiaries include Sen. Mark Udall (D., Colo.), who got $12.1 million, and Rep. Bruce Braley (D., Iowa) with $7.2 million.
 
6. Genetically modified food is dangerous. Farmers have been breeding crop seeds for 10,000 years, but the agricultural innovation known as genetic modification makes liberals shudder. Not a single documented illness has resulted from the trillions of meals containing “genetically modified organisms,” or GMOs, that humans have consumed since the mid-1990s. The technology has been declared safe by every regulatory agency from the Food and Drug Administration to the European Commission.

But insisting on labeling food containing GMOs has turned into a liberal cause. The California Democratic Party platform in 2012 added a demand for GMO labeling; more recently the Oregon Democratic Party climbed aboard. In May 2013, self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont introduced a farm-bill amendment that would allow states to require GMO labeling for food; co-sponsors of the amendment, which failed, included Sens. Mark Begich (D., Ala.) and Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.).

7. Voter ID laws suppress minority turnout. More than 30 states have voter-ID laws, which the left decries as an attempt to disenfranchise minorities who don’t have identification and can’t pay for it. Yet of the 17 states with the strictest requirements, 16 offer free IDs. The Government Accountability Office this month released an analysis of 10 voter-ID studies: Five showed the laws had no statistically significant effect on turnout, four suggested a decrease in turnout (generally among all ethnic groups, though percentages varied), and one found an increase in turnout with voter ID laws in place.

The Democratic Senate candidate in Kentucky, Alison Lundergan Grimes, has nonetheless been running radio ads in urban areas claiming that “Mitch McConnell and the Republicans are trying to take away our right to vote,” based on a 2007 voter-ID amendment the minority leader introduced.
 
8. ObamaCare is gaining popularity. President Obama said in a speech earlier this month that fewer Republicans were running against ObamaCare because “it’s working pretty well in the real world.” Yet the law’s approval rating hovers around 40%, and 27% of people told Gallup this month that the law was hurting them, up from 19% in January, while only 16% reported it was helpful.
Don’t even ask doctors about it: 46% of physicians gave the Affordable Care Act a “D” or “F”, according to a recent survey by the Physicians Foundation, and less than 4% of respondents gave it an “A.” Yet some Democrats are die-hards: 36% of their House candidates have voiced support for ObamaCare on the campaign trail, according to a recent analysis by the Brookings Institution.
 
9. The Keystone XL pipeline would increase oil spills. Let’s check out what President Obama’s State Department had to say: In 2013 pipelines with a diameter larger than 12 inches spilled 910,000 gallons. Railroad tankers spilled 1.5 million gallons. Yet pipelines carry 25 times the oil that tankers do, as environmental analyst Terry Anderson has noted in these pages. Blocking Keystone and forcing more oil to be shipped by rail guarantees more harm to the environment. But on the campaign trail emotion often overrules the facts, and so we have Rick Weiland, the Democratic Senate candidate in South Dakota, adamantly opposing Keystone (“If I lose because of this issue, so be it,” he told the Nation magazine last week). Colorado Sen. Mark Udall is running for re-election after having voted against Keystone in the energy committee in June.

10. Women are paid 77 cents on the dollar compared with men. The mother of all liberal superstitions, this figure comes from shoddy math that divides the average earnings of all women working full-time by the average earnings of all full-time men, without considering career field, education or personal choices. When those factors are included, the wage gap disappears. A 2009 report commissioned by the Labor Department that analyzed more than 50 papers on the topic found that the so-called pay gap “may be almost entirely” the result of choices both men and women make.

Yet here’s Colorado’s Sen. Udall: “It is simply unacceptable for businesses to pay women less than men doing the same work,” citing his support for the Paycheck Fairness Act, which might be better titled the Trial Lawyer Paycheck Act. One irony: The Washington Free Beacon did a little number crunching and discovered that women in Sen. Udall’s office earn 86 cents on the dollar compared with men. Whoops.

Read more »

Why More Liberal Cities Have Less Affordable Housing

Derek Thompson of The Atlantic has an interesting article covering some of the reasons why, despite their ideological commitment to helping the disadvantaged, more liberal cities tend to have less affordable housing:

In general, richer cities have less affordable housing.
But there’s a second reason why San Francisco’s problem is emblematic of a national story. Liberal cities seem to have the worst affordability crises, according to Trulia chief economist Jed Kolko.
In a recent article, Kolko divided the largest cities into 32 “red” metros where Romney got more votes than Obama in 2012 (e.g. Houston), 40 “light-blue” markets where Obama won by fewer than 20 points (e.g. Austin), and 28 “dark-blue” metros where Obama won by more than 20 points (e.g. L.A., SF, NYC). Although all three housing groups faced similar declines in the recession and similar bounce-backs in the recovery, affordability remains a bigger problem in the bluest cities.
“Even after adjusting for differences of income, liberal markets tend to have higher income inequality and worse affordability,” Kolko said.
Kolko’s theory isn’t an outlier. There is a deep literature tying liberal residents to illiberal housing policies that create affordability crunches for the middle class. In 2010, UCLA economist Matthew Kahn published a study of California cities, which found that liberal metros issued fewer new housing permits. The correlation held over time: As California cities became more liberal, he said, they built fewer homes.

The high cost of housing in liberal cities is in large part caused by highly restrictive zoning rules, which in recent years have caused many African-Americans and others to move away from major northeastern cities to areas with less restrictive zoning and lower housing prices in the south and southwest.

Why do liberal cities enact policies that often making housing unaffordable for the poor and much of the middle class? The cynical explanation is that “limousine liberal” voters only pretend to care about affordable housing for the poor and the middle class, but in reality adopt zoning restrictions to keep home prices up and prevent the riffraff from living near them. Such motives may be present in some cases. But, on most issues, there is little correlation between political views and measures of narrow self-interest. It is therefore likely that most voters in liberal cities do genuinely care about affordable housing and the interests of the poor.

The virus that plagues our body politic is not selfish voting, but ignorant voting. Like their conservative counterparts, most liberal voters don’t think carefully about the possible negative side effects of their preferred policies. Just as most of them do not realize that rent control diminishes the stock of housing, they also may not realize that zoning restrictions diminish it, and thereby increase housing costs.

Conservative voters have their own characteristic patterns of economic ignorance. Both sides tend to ignore or even blatantly misinterpret evidence that cuts against their preferred views – especially if the evidence or the reasoning behind it is counter-intuitive. To a considerable extent, the high cost of housing in liberal cities is yet another negative effect of widespread political ignorance.

Well-meaning, but ill-informed voters are not exclusively to blame, of course. In many cases, development restrictions are also favored by influential narrow interest groups, such as developers with strong political connections. If it were easy for newcomers to build new housing and office space, these well-connected insiders would lose much of their competitive edge. Unlike ordinary voters, who tend to be rationally ignorant about public policy, small organized interest groups have strong incentives to pay close attention to policies in which they have a major stake.

As is often the case with perverse regulatory policies, excessive zoning is in part the product of a “baptist-bootlegger” coalition. Well-meaning, but badly misguided Baptists supported Prohibition out of genuine moral concern about the harmful effects of alcohol. Meanwhile, bootleggers backed it because it put money in their pockets. Housing policy in liberal cities is influenced by a similar implicit unholy alliance between well-meaning progressive voters and unscrupulous economic interest groups.

Read more »

Michelle Obama Shows Her Allegiance to Satan

2nd Thessalonians 2:5-10, “Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” 

Notice in the photo to the left that Michelle Obama is flashing a Satanic hand sign. This gesture is the Satanic salute, a sign of recognition between and allegiance of members of Satanism or other unholy groups. The sign is symbolic of a ram or goat, which is the occultist's mockery of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ.

I personally believe that the “Mystery of Iniquity” spoken of in the Scriptures refers to the New World Order, i.e., the beast system of the coming Antichrist. It is clear from the second chapter of Thessalonians that the context of the passage is the coming Antichrist. Even going back as far as the Tower of Babel in the Old Testament, we see men trying to unite against God, and so it is today. I also believe that the “Synagogue of Satan” mentioned by Jesus in Revelation 2:9 refers to the Illuminati, i.e., a demonically-inspired occult group of men and women sworn and committed to bringing to fruition a New World Order—a Global, Godless, Totalitarian, Communist Police State, whose ultimate leader will be the Man of Sin himself!

Countless high-ranking politicians from around the world have been photographed making this Satanic hand sign publicly, showing their unwavering allegiance for the New World Order and Satan himself, including George and Laura Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle, Vladimir Putin, Yassar Arafat, Ahmadinajad, and countless others. We are living in the Last Days and the Rapture is imminent my friend.

"And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast..." — Revelation 13:4

Read more »

Obama, New World Order Using Chemtrails to Spread Ebola

 
Agents of the New World Order (NWO) have launched an international campaign to widen viral Ebola infection zones in Western Africa by using chemtrail spreading aircraft. After secret talks with President Obama, it was decided that a population management plan was agreed to by the two entities, both of whom have similar goals, population control through reduction. Read this to mean “enslavement” for members of the rank and file.

The Ebola virus (EBOV) causes Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF), deadly for humans and nonhuman primates, with a death rate as high as 90%. Infection from EBOV can occur through direct contact with bodily secretions or blood from an infected individual; however evidence of aerosol transmission has been reported in laboratory conditions. It is this aspect of the virus that has been exploited by the NWO scientists.

A highly evolved strain of the deadly virus was cultivated in petri dishes by sublime scientists in secret NWO Laboratories under the most top secret of conditions.

The recent epidemic in the Western Africa nations of Sierra Leone and Liberia has killed over 3,000.

The National Science Academy of the United States, along with the government of the State of Texas

have recently denied Ebola cases and are attempting to calm the growing fears of the public at large. Their press briefings have come under increased scrutiny by this and other investigative news sources as data to the contrary keeps arriving. The news of increased chemtrail activity over the infected area raises concerns over diabolical intent from the international community.

A recent upswing in chemtrail activity in Western Africa was determined to have begun just 18 hours after US science and technology department representatives visited the area and conferred with Liberian Government officials in meetings that were closed to the press. Rumors circulate of a secret conference call between the New World Order, Obama, and former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeldt, who is a chemistry expert and signatory of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC).

World health Agency workers have been removed from the areas covered by the chemtrail spraying in much the same manner that Obama uses FEMA to manage the population. Already, there are reports of concentration camps being built just outside the chemtrail activity perimeter to house stragglers and enslave refugees.

It is believed that the New World Order has plans to institute a fascistic one world government. A highly orchestrated and covert plan to destroy liberty, subvert local autonomy, and enslave the population by using biogenetic and chemical procedures is suspected by many. Their filthy handprints are all over the Ebola Epidemic.

 Fears are rising that a successful extermination of the Liberian and Seirra Leone Population through chemtrail launched Ebola infection is just the first step. The New World Order has reportedly visited areas of the Middle East and Asia for feasibility studies for future campaigns.

Read more »

Topless Femen Activist Fined for Attacking Vladimir Putin Statue

 

A member of topless feminist group Femen was convicted of exhibitionism Wednesday after attacking a statue of Russian President Vladimir Putin at a wax museum. With "Kill Putin" written on her nude breasts, Iana Zhdanova target the likeness of Putin at the Musee Grevin with a wooden stake in June.

The Ukrainian activist, who has lived in France for two years as a political refugee, laughed in court after the judge ordered her to pay fine of 1,500 euros ($1,897) for vandalism and a crime called "sexual exhibition" in French, as well as other damages payable to Musee Grevin. "I'm laughing because it's very strange," said Zhdanova, 26, outside the courtroom. "I'm very surprised by this decision." Femen specialises in shock bare-breast appearances to dramatise women's rights causes, mainly in the male-dominated hierarchies of Russia and its former Soviet allies, with Putin a particular target. The wax statue of Putin fell over during the attack, a part of the head shattering. It has since been repaired.

Read more »

This Norwegian Preteen Is 'Marrying' A 37-Year-Old For One Important Reason

 

Thea is 12 years old. She's a seventh-grader at her school in Norway, and she loves riding horses and listening to One Direction. According to her blog, she's also marrying a 37-year-old man this weekend.

But Thea and her impending wedding aren't actually real. They were fabricated for a viral marketing campaign aimed at raising awareness about the forced marriages of underage girls around the globe.

One in nine girls worldwide are married before they turn 15, and one in three are married before they turn 18. The group that launched the Thea campaign, Plan Norway, an offshoot of anti-child marriage organization Plan International, sought to use the fictional girl's story to highlight this issue for Norwegians.

Olaf Thommessen, national director of Plan Norway, said of the project in a post on his organization's website:

We want to show how horrible the practice of child marriage is and put it in a context that is familiar and normally associated with love, happiness and hope for the future. Many girls dream about their wedding day and this day is often referred to as one of the happiest days of their lives. But for 39,000 young girls who get married every day, their wedding day is the worst day of their life.

The site set up for the Thea campaign was designed to look like a tween's personal blog. A writer posing as Thea posted musings about pre-wedding plans, detailed a disagreement between Thea and her mom over the color of the wedding gown and even touched on Thea's fears about having sex with her new husband.

Thommessen explained that Plan Norway's goal with the Thea project was to mobilize Norwegians to stop Thea's wedding before the little girl made it to the altar on Oct. 11.

The plan worked. Concerned Norwegians reportedly called the police to alert them to Thea's plight.

The campaign was intended to inspire people to get involved in stopping child marriage on a global scale by sponsoring girls in developing countries. Plan International's sponsorship program connects donors with children in need of aid. In exchange for monthly contributions toward ongoing Plan projects in the child's community, the sponsor receives updates and letters from the child.

"The practice [of underage marriages] violates girls’ human rights, curtails their education, harms their health, and sharply constrains their futures," Plan International writes on its website. "Girls who marry early are most often deprived of the opportunity to reach their full potential and rise out of poverty."

The International Center for Research on Women notes that "[w]hile countries with the highest prevalence of child marriage are concentrated in Western and Sub-Saharan Africa, due to population size, the largest number of child brides reside in South Asia."

New and activism blog RYOT remarked that "if Plan has proved anything, it’s this: It shouldn’t take a blonde-haired, rosy-cheeked 12-year-old to make us care about child brides."

Read more »

Flaws Found In Ukraine's Probe Of Maidan Massacre

 

For millions of Ukrainians, it was a crime against humanity. In February, more than 100 protesters were gunned down in the Maidan uprising that toppled the president, Viktor Yanukovich. The victims are now known as “the Heavenly Hundred.”

In April, prosecutors arrested three suspects, members of an elite unit within the “Berkut” riot police. Senior among them was Dmytro Sadovnyk, 38, a decorated commander, who was accused of ordering his men to fire on the crowds on the morning of Feb. 20. The three stand accused of massacring 39 unarmed protesters.

On Sept. 19, the case took a turn when a judge released Sadovnyk into house arrest – and, two weeks later, he went missing.

Maidan activists were outraged, convinced that a corrupt system had let a killer escape. The judge was placed under investigation. The prosecutor said in a statement: "D. Sadovnyk, suspected of committing an extremely grievous crime, aiming to avoid punishment, disappeared from his place of permanent residence."

But in a country where justice often isn’t blind, there’s another possibility: Sadovnyk was being framed, and saw flight as his best option. In court last month, he called the case against him “a political lynching.” In the days before he vanished, his wife and his lawyer say, Sadovnyk and his family received death threats.

A Reuters examination of Ukraine's probes into the Maidan shootings - based on interviews with prosecutors, defence attorneys, protesters, police officers and legal experts – has uncovered serious flaws in the case against Sadovnyk and the other two Berkut officers.

Among the evidence presented against Sadovnyk was a photograph. Prosecutors say it shows him near Kiev’s Independence Square on Feb. 20, wearing a mask and holding a rifle with two hands, his fingers clearly visible.

The problem: Sadovnyk doesn’t have two hands. His right hand, his wife told Reuters, was blown off by a grenade in a training accident six years ago. As prosecutors introduced the image at a hearing in April, said Yuliya Sadovnyk, her husband removed a glove and displayed his stump to the courtroom.
“He can’t really shoot,” said Serhiy Vilkov, Sadovnyk’s lawyer. “To blame him for the crime is a political game.”

The probes into the killings have been hindered by missing evidence. Many guns allegedly used to shoot protesters have vanished; many of the bullets fired were taken home as souvenirs. Barricades, bullet-pierced trees and other items of forensic evidence were removed, lawyers say.

A former Berkut commander told Reuters that Berkut officers destroyed documentary evidence that potentially could identify fellow officers. They did so, he said, because they feared the Berkut’s headquarters would be attacked by a mob of revenge-seeking protesters after Yanukovich fled to Russia.

The former president isn’t the only key figure missing. In an interview before Sadovnyk vanished, Ukraine’s general prosecutor, Vitaly Yarema, said investigators had identified 17 Berkut officers as alleged participants in the protester shootings, based on surveillance camera videos and mobile-phone location data. Of the 17, he said, 14 had fled to Russia or Crimea, including the Berkut’s top commander in Kiev. Sadovnyk and his two co-defendants were the only identified suspects who had remained behind.

MILESTONE

Independence Square was the rallying point in Kiev where the anti-Yanukovich revolution largely unfolded between November and February. (The word Maidan means “square” in Ukrainian.) The killings there quickly were recognised as a milestone in modern Ukrainian history, part of a chain of events that set off a separatist conflict and Russian incursions that have shaken the country to its core.
Videos and photographs appear to show how Berkut officers shot at protesters and beat them with sticks. In one video, the Berkut are seen making a man stand naked in the snow.

The public is demanding answers and justice. But the investigations are testing Ukraine’s ability to rise above the kinds of failings that have hobbled the country ever since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

In contrast to, say, Poland, Ukraine has never gelled into a robust state. Kiev has had two revolutions since independence. A host of endemic problems - political corruption, racketeering, a divide between speakers of Ukrainian and Russian - have left it feeble and fractious. Another of the state’s chief failings, outside observers say, is a broken justice system.

Under Yanukovich and his rivals before him, courts and cops were political instruments. Yulia Tymoshenko, runner-up to Yanukovich in the 2010 presidential election, later was jailed in a case widely criticised as political.

In its 2013 report on human rights, the U.S. State Department cited the Tymoshenko conviction in observing that Ukraine’s courts “remained vulnerable to political pressure and corruption, were inefficient, and lacked public confidence. In certain cases the outcome of trials appeared to be predetermined.”

The post-Yanukovich government acknowledged as much this July, in a report it prepared with the International Monetary Fund. “The tax administration, the police, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the State Enforcement Service, and the judiciary were noted as having traditionally been viewed as among the most corrupt public institutions,” the report found.

The past shows signs of repeating itself.

The two prosecutors and a government minister who have led the Maidan shooting probes all played roles in supporting the uprising. One of these officials told Reuters that the investigators gathering the evidence are completely independent.

Another gap in the prosecution: To date, no one has been apprehended in the shooting of policemen. According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Interior Affairs, between Feb. 18 and 20, 189 police officers suffered gunshot wounds. Thirteen died.

In addition, the former acting general prosecutor who oversaw the arrests of the three Berkut officers declared on television that they “have already been shown to be guilty.” That statement, said legal experts, could prejudice the cases. Ukraine is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that criminal defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

“A public statement by a prosecutor that directly challenges that presumption is a denial of due process,” said Richard Harvey, a British barrister who specialises in international criminal law.
Even some of the bereaved families question the fairness of the proceedings. Serhiy Bondarchuk, a physics teacher, died of a gunshot wound to the back on the morning of Feb. 20. His son, Volodymyr Bondarchuk, said the killing is one of the 39 in which Sadovnyk and his two colleagues are suspected. Volodymyr said that based on his own inquiries, he doubts the three were responsible for his father’s death.

“They are trying to close the case because their bosses and the community just want to have someone to punish,” he said. “The investigation does not have enough evidence to prove the guilt of these three people.”

Volodymyr Bondarchuk recently helped organise an association of about 70 families of dead protesters. “The main aim for us,” he said, “is an objective and accurate investigation.”

GOLDEN EAGLES

February 20 was the bloodiest day of the Maidan uprising. Scores of protesters and police officers were shot and killed. A day later, opposition leaders signed a European Union-mediated peace pact.
Public pressure mounted to prosecute the perpetrators. Within a week, Yanukovich, by then a fugitive, was indicted for the mass murder of protesters. An interim government disbanded the Berkut, a force of several thousand whose name means “golden eagle.”

On April 3, Ukrainian authorities announced the arrests of several members of an elite special unit within the Berkut. One was Sadovnyk, the unit’s commander. A father of three, he first joined the Berkut in 1996 after serving in the Ukrainian army. He later won numerous commendations for his police service.

Also detained were two younger officers: Serhiy Zinchenko, 23, and Pavel Abroskin, 24.
An internal prosecution document, reviewed by Reuters, sketches out investigators’ version of events. It is a “Notice of Suspicion” for Zinchenko, dated April 3.

The document alleges that on Feb. 18, the Berkut’s top commander, Serhiy Kusiuk, gave an oral order to Sadovnyk to deliver automatic rifles to his unit. Kusiuk is among the Berkut officers who fled to Russia, prosecutors say. He couldn’t be reached for comment.

On the morning of Feb. 20, several members of Sadovnyk’s unit were shot. At around 9 a.m., the document alleges, Sadovnyk ordered his men to fire in the direction of unarmed protesters walking up Instytutska Street in downtown Kiev. The shooting lasted nearly two hours, and more than nine protesters were killed, the document states.

Sadovnyk’s order to shoot was an abuse of power, “given that there was no immediate threat to the lives of the police officers,” the document alleges.

Vilkov, Sadovnyk’s lawyer, disputes that account. Although the document indicates Sadovnyk was at the scene, Vilkov said his client was not on Instytutska Street when the protesters were killed the morning of Feb. 20. Vilkov declined to discuss Sadovnyk’s whereabouts.

In a telephone interview on Sept. 30, Sadovnyk told Reuters he was at a meeting on the morning of Feb. 20 at Kiev police headquarters. It began sometime between 8 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., he said. The purpose, he said, was to deal with reports that many armed protesters would be arriving in Kiev after a call by protest leaders to mobilise.

Sadovnyk said about seven police officials and officers were present, and he named three of them. Reuters was unable to locate the three for comment.

At the meeting, Sadovnyk said, the attendees heard gunshots and screams over police radios. The radios carried reports of the death of a Berkut officer and of other police wounded on Instytutska Street.

Sadovnyk said at that point, he left and drove to the scene, taking about 15 minutes to get there. He said he does not remember what time he arrived, but that investigators could figure it out by tracking his mobile phone. He said he brought a gun and protective equipment.

When he arrived, he said, he found a nearly empty scene, with police officers running and the sound of ricocheting bullets. He said he neither received nor gave any order for his unit’s members to shoot at protesters, nor did he fire at anyone himself.

“I deny killing,” he said.

Vadim Ostanin, an attorney for the Berkut’s Kiev branch, gave a similar account to Reuters. He said there is a video showing that Sadovnyk attended the meeting at police headquarters. Ostanin said that when Sadovnyk arrived at the scene of the shooting, his unit’s men already were retreating.

“GUILTY”

The general prosecutor’s office declined to discuss the defence’s account. In a statement, the office said it has plenty of evidence against Sadovnyk. This includes videos of a protester being shot by a gunman. The office believes the gunman is Sadovnyk, based on the “special way” the shooter is holding the weapon. In a previous statement, the office said: “The question of guilt or, conversely, innocence of mentioned persons will be resolved by the court.”

Oleh Makhnitsky was Ukraine’s acting general prosecutor until June. In an interview, Reuters asked him about the purported photograph of a two-handed Sadovnyk, which was cited at a hearing in April.

The purpose of that hearing, Makhnitsky said, was not to judge the reliability of the evidence but to determine whether Sadovnyk was a flight risk. He said the evidence against Sadovnyk would be presented at a future trial.

Makhnitsky, now an adviser to President Petro Poroshenko, said he was a leader of a lawyers’ group that provided legal assistance to anti-Yanukovich protesters during the Maidan demonstrations. He said politics played no role in the prosecution of the three Berkut officers.

“The investigators are in a separate unit that can’t even be influenced by the prosecutor,” he said.
On May 30, Makhnitsky gave an interview on local television about the arrests of the three officers. The suspects, he said, “have already been shown to be guilty.”

Asked about those comments by Reuters, Makhnitsky said he meant that “enough evidence was gathered to prove they are guilty.” A court ultimately will decide, he said.

The extent of the prosecution’s evidence against the three officers remains unclear. Court filings in the cases are not public.

Attorneys for officers Zinchenko and Abroskin said that as far as they knew, much of the evidence against their clients consists of videos that prosecutors allege show the officers holding guns. The attorneys say the men in the videos - wearing masks and helmets - are not their clients.

In one video, “only the eyes and nose are seen, and that guy isn’t shooting; he’s just turning around with a gun and looking around,” said Stefan Reshko, an attorney for Abroskin. Reuters did not view the video.

Oleksandr Poznyak, who represents Zinchenko, said the evidence against his client includes a video of a masked man holding a gun. The attorney showed the video to Reuters. The masked gunman, he said, is taller and has bigger hands than Zinchenko, and is holding the gun in his left hand. While Zinchenko writes with his left hand, the lawyer said he has photographs showing that his client shoots with his right hand. Reuters didn't view those pictures.

Defence attorneys also plan to argue that the Berkut officers were entitled to fire in self-defence: They were in danger, as demonstrated by the fact that their colleagues were shot. Prosecutors argue that the 39 protesters the three are accused of killing on Feb. 20 were all unarmed.

The prosecutors “represent the whole picture as a peaceful protest,” Sadovnyk told a judge at a hearing on Sept. 5. But, he added, “On the 20th, early in the morning, as a result of the peaceful protest, nearly 17 representatives of law enforcement were killed.”

GRAPPLING HOOK & STEEL CLAW

To bolster Sadovnyk’s point, several ex-Berkut officers who still serve on Kiev’s police force agreed to meet a reporter and photographer. In a small room at their old headquarters, they produced a selection of what they said were weapons seized from demonstrators.

The items included a grappling hook attached to a steel bar, wooden clubs affixed to chains, and a steel claw made of four welded nails. The ex-officers showed a burnt police shield with two bullet holes that they said had been struck by a Molotov cocktail.

Alongside the weaponry were framed photos of two Berkut officers who they said were killed at the demonstrations.

“If these officials were fair, they would catch not only policemen, but also the activists from the other side,” said one ex-Berkut member.

On Sept. 5, a tense crowd watched as a judge heard arguments over whether Sadovnyk should be released into house arrest. The defendant observed from inside a metal cage.

The prosecutor, Oleksii Donskyi, called Sadovnyk’s claim that he was absent during the shootings “a complete lie.” When the judge retired to deliberate in chambers, an exasperated-looking Yuliya Sadovnyk marched up to where the prosecutor sat and told him: “I’m waiting for your case to collapse.” Donskyi declined to comment.

The judge ordered that Sadovnyk be kept behind bars. Two weeks later, a different judge gave him house arrest. The prosecution appealed. Last Friday, Sadovnyk was called to a hearing to determine whether he should be sent back to jail.

That’s when he vanished. Yuliya Sadovnyk said he left their apartment at 7 a.m. last Friday, saying he felt ill. She hasn’t heard from him since, she said.

In the days before the hearing, attorney Vilkov says, the Sadovnyks, their three children and the lawyer himself received death threats. Yuliya Sadovnyk read to Reuters a sample of texts she received.

“Hey you, Berkut slut,” reads one. “Horrible death is waiting for you and your spawn. Glory to Ukraine!"

Abroskin and Zinchenko remain in jail. No trial date has been set. All three men face life imprisonment.

Read more »

Five Reasons Why Putin’s Objectives In Ukraine Have Backfired And Failed

  

Vladimir Putin’s strategy of creating a “New Russia” from eight Russian-speaking regions in Urkaine has failed. Russia’s president has covertly and overtly supported violent separatism in Donetsk and Luhansk (known collectively as the Donbas), where over 10,000 combatants and civilians have died, with the aim of controlling eight Ukrainian regions. Yet Putin currently controls only a third of the Donbas that was never part of historic, Tsarist “New Russia”.

Putin faced – and continues to face – five obstacles to his initial goals.

The first was, to his surprise, a determined and successful fight back by Ukrainian armed forces and volunteer National Guard, who were set to defeat the separatists subsequently saved by Russia’s August invasion.

The second was international sanctions at a time of low oil prices that will increasingly damage Russia’s economy and finances over the next 1-2 years. Further sanctions would speed up Russia’s decline.

The third was public opinion in Russia, which although supporting giving aid to the separatists does not support an outright invasion of Ukraine. Evidence of this was last month’s 50,000-strong peace march in Moscow.

The fourth factor is the poor state of Russia’s armed forces, which mirrors that of Ukraine’s. Although Russia – unlike Ukraine – has invested in military modernization, this has only created an elite corps of “green men” and airborne units who probably account for no more than 10 per cent of total troops. This, plus inevitable strong Ukrainian resistance, rules out a full-scale invasion of Ukraine which is geographically large and would be impossible to hold down.

The final factor shows to what degree the world view created by Putin’s state controlled media has never corresponded to reality. Putin always mixed up “Russian speakers” with “Russians” in Ukraine, believing they were one and the same. So he was always unable to fathom the fact that a large proportion of Ukrainian armed forces and National Guard are Russian speakers. Russian speakers also dominate the huge civil society in neighbouring Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk who have collected and distribute donations to Ukrainian security forces.

Ukraine’s eight Russian-speaking regions are divided into three groups.

The most pro-Russian and Soviet in their identity are, not surprisingly, the Crimea and Donbas, the former annexed by Russia and the latter the scene of bloody conflict. These were also the home bases of Ukraine’s Party of Regions, Communists and Russian nationalists.

Kharkiv and Odessa were the swing regions that could have gone either way in the spring. Both had Russian nationalist groups – Oplot in Kharkiv and Rodina in Odessa – whose extremists sought to incite civil war. Failing this, their members joined the separatists. The most tragic result came on May 2, when 40 Russian nationalists died inside the Trade Union building in Odessa when it was burnt down following the shooting of 10 Ukrainian patriots by Rodina.

Kharkiv and Odessa are large student cities, with many foreign students in the former. They are predominantly middle class, with a large small and medium business sector and without the dominant rapacious clans and oligarchs found in the Donbas. Ukrainian patriots, including Kharkiv Metalist “ultra” football fans who coined the hugely popular song Putin Khuylo (“Putin is a Dickhead”), far outnumbered Russian nationalists on the streets in the spring.

The least pro-Russian and Soviet are Dnipropetrovsk, led by Jewish-Ukrainian Governor Ihor Kolomoysky who is the sponsor of the Ukraine Today English-language television channel, and Zaporizhzhya. The former was the home of Soviet Ukrainian elites and the latter has historic links to the Zaporozhzhian Cossacks who – unlike Russian Cossack supporters of the empire – are grounded in freedom loving and anti-imperial discourse. Kherson, bordering occupied Crimea, and Mykolayiv, with the exception of the port, are also not pro-Russian.

Putin not only failed to achieve his strategic goals in Ukraine but his strategy has thoroughly backfired in three ways.

A large majority of previously ambivalent Russian-speaking Ukrainians became Ukrainian patriots; in a time of conflict, individuals have to choose sides. This important lesson was missed by Donetsk oligarch Rinat Akhmetov who continued to waver and today is regarded with suspicion by Ukrainian patriots and Donbas separatists.

The foreign leader with the most negative image in Ukraine is Putin; 75 per cent of Ukrainians have a negative view of him. The Soviet indoctrination of Ukrainians and Russians as “brothers” has been irrevocably shattered.

Support for NATO membership has soared to 50 per cent; the highest it had ever been was in the late 1990s when it stood at 30 per cent. Coupled with this is a similar proportion of Ukrainians who support Ukraine returning to being a nuclear-armed state. Although this, like support for NATO membership, is a product of insecurity, it also reflects angst at betrayal by the US, the UK and Russia, who promised to support Ukraine’s security in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

Ukraine’s pre-term election on October 26 will crown Putin’s defeat.

The Party of Regions, with miserable support, is not standing, while the Communists will for the first time not enter parliament. That the new parliament will be its most pro-European is a product of Putin’s failed strategy, which removed the two most pro-Russian regions, failed to create a “New Russia” and solidified Ukrainian patriotism in Russian-speaking Ukraine.

Read more »

What Michelle Obama Just Said Shows She’s Not “First Lady” Material

 

In 1994, during an MTV-sponsored event with President Bill Clinton, one teen asked the question that she claimed that the world was “dying to know.”
“Boxers or briefs?” she asked.

Clinton, in one of many un-presidential moments (he had already appeared on Arsenio Hall playing the saxophone), answered the question.

Now, apparently, the question doesn’t even have to be posed before White House occupants share information with the world about their undergarments, according to BizPacReview.

Michele Obama told the world on Wednesday what she was wearing under her dress, whether it was “dying to know” or not. (We’re pretty sure it was the latter.)

In a nation stricken by the threat of terrorist attacks, deadly hemorrhagic fever, and stagnant wages, the first lady was speaking at something called the White House Fashion Education Workshop.
At least she wasn’t thinking up new ways to remove the last vestiges of enjoyment from school lunches.

Addressing “young people interested in the fashion industry,” Obama turned to the creator of Spanx — undergarments designed to make people look more fit than they actually are — as a source of inspiration.

How fitting that Obama should lift up a company whose product is designed for one thing and one thing only — to hide the truth.

After describing the founding of Spanx as an example of perseverance that led to success, Obama shared a little truth of her own.

“And we all wear them – with pride!” she said.

I could have gone my whole life without hearing that, thank you very much.

Click here to find out about another reason why some say Michelle Obama is not fit to be first lady.

And here I was, thinking that Obama appeared to be in shape because of her healthy eating habits. I guess this explains the presence of the 600-calorie honey buns in White House vending machines.
I thought it was for the reporters.

Read more »

The 21 Greatest Conservative Rap Songs Of All Time

When Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, discussed his love for rap music extensively in an interview with GQ magazine. Eyebrows were raised: The genre is not typically seen as one that appeals to conservatives, in particular social conservatives.

Conservative columnist Mark Steyn put it as follows: “I think there’s an absence of human feeling in these songs. It’s not just that they’re explicit. When you talk to social conservatives, they get upset because there’s all these bad words in there. It’s beyond that, actually.”
Many rappers, at the same time, openly express their support for liberal politicians and policies: From Jay-Z and his wife Beyoncé raising money for President Obama, to Young Jeezy singing his praises in “My President”:

My president is black, my Lambo’s blue

And I’ll be godd***** if my rims ain’t too

(…)

Mr. Black President, yo Obama for real

They gotta put your face on the five-thousand dollar bill

Yet at the same time — and discussions about discursive practices aside — there is a strong undercurrent of deeply conservative thought expressed in songs by a wide range of some of the most famous rap artists of all. And it is not just the kind of classical-liberal concerns over government overreach in specific policy areas (narcotics, law enforcement) that one would expect based on the attention rap music has received in the public debate, though there is quite a bit of that. As I will show by analyzing the twenty-one greatest conservative rap songs, selected based on a mix of ideological purity (primarily), musical quality, and popular appeal, all three legs of President Reagan’s “three-legged stool” are represented.

The songs I discuss express support not just for pro-family social values, but also for small government and peace through strength. That said, domestic policy receives more attention than foreign policy, a common feature of most contemporary popular music in the West, and partially for that reason, the relative size of the legs reflect the Republican Party’s primary electorate better than its policy platform.

Without further ado, let the ranking commence: 21 rap songs to inspire the conservative movement in the 21st century.

21. Justin Bieber featuring Busta Rhymes – Drummer Boy (2011)

The first song on the list — ranked this low mostly because of its disregard for the second criterion mentioned earlier, musical quality — is a collaborative effort by teen idol Justin Bieber and past-his-heyday rapper Busta Rhymes. A cover of “The Carol of the Drum,” the classical Christmas song by Katherine Kennicott Davis, the song tells the story of a poor drummer boy who pays tribute to the baby Jesus (“Come they told me, pa rum pa pum pum / A newborn king to see, pa rum pa pum pum.”)
But this is not just an overt endorsement of the Gospel. When Mr. Bieber turns to discussing the policy implications of 1 John 3:17 (“But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?”), it is private charity, not government redistribution that he sees as the way forward:

It’s crazy how some people say, say they don’t care,

When there’s people on the street with no food; it’s not fair.

It’s about time for you to act merrily;

It’s about time for you to give to charity.

(…)

So I think some of you need to act bold;

Give a can to a drive, let’s change the globe.

This is what “asking the rich to pay their fair share” should look like — not coercion through the tax system, but an appeal to humanity’s moral core.

20. 2pac – Keep Ya Head Up (1993)

Tupac Shakur, or 2Pac, (despite?) being the son of two Black Panthers, makes more appearances (three) on this list than any other artist. In this first one, he attacks contemporary feminist beliefs, decries single-parent families, and calls on men, particularly those in his own African-American community, to step up and take responsibility. He voices Bill Cosby when discussing the latter, while at the same time reaffirming traditional gender roles (“You know what makes me unhappy / When brothers make babies, and leave a young mother to be a pappy”). While expressing compassion for single mothers raising children by themselves (“And uh, to all the ladies havin’ babies on they own / I know it’s kinda rough and you’re feelin’ all alone”), he does not see such household structures as effective alternatives to traditional families (“Time to heal our women, be real to our women / And if we don’t we’ll have a race of babies / That will hate the ladies that make the babies”). But abortion is not an acceptable, easy way out for Mr. Shakur: “And since a man can’t make one / He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one / So will the real men get up?” His harsh criticism of men who “clown a lot” ends on a positive note, as he expresses his hope that a return to traditional values will mean that “things are gonna get easier” and “things’ll get brighter.”

19. Eminem – Role Model (1999)

Marshall Bruce Mathers III, better known by his stage name Eminem, grew up in Detroit, probably the single city to have been ravaged the most thoroughly by Democratic Party malfeasance and malgovernance. It should not come as a surprise, then, that this song from his major label debut, The Slim Shady LP, released during the Clinton administration, contains a vicious attack on the Clintons. In a mere four verses, he highlights Bill’s adultery and tenuous drug use claims, while also dedicating some choice words to his wife:

So if I said I never did drugs

That would mean I lie AND get f***** more than the President does

Hillary Clinton tried to slap me and call me a pervert

I ripped her f****** tonsils out and fed her sherbet (B****!)

This is, of course, not necessarily how a role model should sound, and Mr. Mathers acknowledges as much. Well aware of his own imperfections, he carefully explains that public figures are not per se examples to be followed, a message that should resonate with conservatives concerned about mainstream culture:

I get a clean shave, bathe, go to a rave

Die from an overdose and dig myself up out of my grave

My middle finger won’t go down, how do I wave?

And this is how I’m supposed to teach kids how to behave?

18. Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dogg – Still D.R.E. (1999)

In “Still D.R.E.,” from his first studio album after a seven year hiatus, Andre Romelle Young, or Dr. Dre, speaks to the value of effort and experience. He starts out by painting a picture of the skepticism he faces as an older, more experienced musician:

Ladies, they pay homage, but haters say Dre fell off

How n****? My last album was “The Chronic” (n****)

They want to know if he still got it

They say rap’s changed, they want to know how I feel about it

But just because something is hip and new it is not necessarily better (“Still the beats bang, still doing my thang / Since I left, ain’’ too much changed, still”). Hope and change are not a substitute for skill and competence: “I bring the fire till you’re soaking in your seat / It’s not a fluke, it’s been tried, I’m the truth.” But of course, even Dr. Young’s tried and tested approach to producing beats is of limited worth without hard work. From the moment he wakes up till the moment he goes to sleep, his mind is focused on his professional obligations (“Treat my rap like Cali weed, I smoke til I sleep / Wake up in the A.M., compose a beat”). But that does not mean that he is unwilling to dedicate some of his time to teaching, passing on the truth of the ages to new generations (“Kept my ear to the streets, signed Eminem / He’s triple platinum, doing 50 a week”). Near the end of the song, all this culminates in a warning to wannabe revolutionaries everywhere: “Dr. Dre be the name / Still running the game.” And this extends, of course, to those who believe that a Marxist utopia can be established through democratically endorsed redistribution of wealth. As Dr. Young explains in “Forgot About Dre,” a song from his next album: “If it was up to me / You motherf****** would stop coming up to me / With your hands out lookin’ up to me / Like you want something free.”

17. Cidinho e Doca – Rap das Armas (2007)

A common theme in the genre of rap is a glorification of gun ownership and use. At the same time, very few songs present a principled defense of Second Amendment rights; anger toward law enforcement (as in Body Count’s highly controversional 1992 record “Cop Killer”) and a thirst for wanton machismo are more dominant streaks in American rap music. 2Pac’s “Hit ‘em up” exemplifies this:

Five shots couldn’t drop me

I took it and smiled

Now I’m back to set the record straight

With my A-K

I’m still the thug that you love to hate

Motherf***** I’ll Hit ‘Em Up

It is, remarkably, a song from Brazil that best expresses the sentiment that gun ownership finds its ultimate justification in self-defense against totalitarian government. “Rap das armas,” the theme song from the movie Elite Squad, describes a neighborhood ready to resist. For if the agents of government have all been corrupted (“Porque esses alemão são tudo safado“), yet enter your community heavily armed (“Vem um de AR15 e o outro de 12 na mão“), what other option is there but to find Second-Amendment solutions? And there is no way to truly enforce those rights but to match the government’s military might: “A vizinhança dessa massa já diz que não agüenta / Na entrada da favela já tem ponto 50.” M2 .50 caliber machine guns may be seen as weapons of war by Democratic senators from California, but tyranny is much more easily forced upon a populace without them.

16. Nas – I Can (2003)

Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, or Nas, released his song “I Can” in 2003. It charted at #12 in the Billboard Hot 100, making it his highest-charting single to date. The central message of the song is that education and hard work are the path to success, not government handouts or a life of crime. Mr. Jones expresses an aspirational belief in opportunity for all (“You can be anything in the world, in God we trust”), but without effort, all of that opportunity will be squandered (“If I work hard at it (If I work hard at it) / I’ll be where I wanna be (I’ll be where I wanna be)”). He warns the young against the temptations posed by sex, drugs and ignorance:

Hung with the wrong person

Got her strung on that

Heroin, cocaine, sniffin’ up drugs all in her nose

Coulda died, so young, now looks ugly and old

(…)

Whatever you decide, be careful, some men be

Rapists, so act your age, don’t pretend to be

Older than you are, give yourself time to grow

(…)

Young boys, you can use a lot of help, you know

You thinkin’ life’s all about smokin’ weed and ice

You don’t wanna be my age and can’t read and write

All in all, a great message for the children that, coming shortly after No Child Left Behind was enacted, must have pleased President George W. Bush immensely. How does “change” come about? When individuals live up to the demands of their personal responsibility, not when United Nations bureaucrats issue letters expressing their disapproval. Or in Mr. Jones’ words: “Read more, learn more, change the globe.”

15. Wyclef Jean – Perfect Gentleman (2001)

Would-be Haitian presidential candidate Wyclef Jean, whose rise to fame commenced when he was a member of New Jersey rap outfit “The Fugees” (one of his fellow Fugees, Lauryn Hill, will make multiple appearances later on), discusses the importance of adhering to ethical standards in the face of adversity in this reflection on morally ambiguous occupations. In a song dedicated to strip clubs (“I’ma send this one out to the gentlemen’s clubs”), he draws the line of acceptability well before prostitution (“Just ‘cuz she dances go-go / That don’t make her a ho, no”). Though unwilling to praise the choices strippers have made, he is not about to condemn them either, for all fall short of the glory of God (“You calling her a hooker? / He without sin cast the first stone”).

Passing judgment is further complicated by the second verse, in which a stripper named Hope (a reference to President Clinton’s activities in the Oval Office?) gives her side of the story. Her focus rests heavily on the effort and skills required for her work, as well as her ambition to redeem herself (“Have you any idea how hard this is? / I could flex in 25 positions / But I only work here to pay my tuition”). Now contrast this with the portrayal of stripclub customers presented a bit later by Mr. Jean:

Talking about, ‘I, I don’t be going to the strip joints’

You’re lying man! You’d be surprised who you see up in there man.

It is hard not to read this juxtaposition of characters as a modern rendition of Luke 7:36-50. And indeed, unsurprisingly, it is ultimately the sinful woman, not the Pharisee who passes by the strip joint only to pass judgment, who receives more love from Mr. Jean: “We gonna elope to Mexico / Called up my mama, said I’m in love with a stripper, yo.”

14. Jay-Z featuring Beanie Sigel — Where Have You Been? (2000)

Shawn Corey Carter, or Jay-Z, and Beanie Sigel pick up where 2Pac left off in “Keep Ya Head Up,” elaborating on the impact an absent father has on an adolescent’s personal development. “Where Have You Been?” is an eerie, heartwrenching account of Mr. Carter and Mr. Sigel’s experiences growing up, learning that abandonment and abuse are moral equivalents. As Mr. Sigel puts it:

We never pitched or kicked at a ball

dog, you never taught me s***

how to fight, ride a bike, fix a flat

none of that sorts of s***

N**** you was an abusive pops

f*** you left me out to dry, stuck

Mr. Carter describes growing up in a similar situation:

You said that you was comin’ through

I would stay in the hallway (waitin’)

always playin the bench (waitin’)

and that day came and went

F*** you very much you showed me the worst kind of pain

Without a father figure to guide them toward adulthood, Mr. Carter and Mr. Sigel create their own vision of manliness, turning to crime and drugs:

I ‘member that day you showed me that gat, that 9

put it in my palm when I was young

and said that would be mine, you turned me out

the reason why I hit the block

reason why I tried to hit them cops

reason why I started hittin’ shots

reason why I started gettin’ licked

and drinkin’ syrup and skippin’ court

It is remarkable to see how outspoken both of the rappers performing here are in their defense of family values. Even though at the time of writing they have worked their way up to prosperity (“mommy drivin 6′s now (yeah), I got riches now (yeah) / I bought a nice home for both of my sisters now”), bitterness remains. Their fathers’ failure to provide them with a stable environment at home, a loving family to rely upon, has done irreparable damage (“Do you even remember the tender boy / you turned into a cold young man?”). Single mothers and the children they raise are the eventual victims of fatherhood denied, and no cunningly framed defense of alternative family structure can change that.

13. Eminem featuring Dr. Dre – Guilty Conscience (1999)

This second appearance for both Eminem and Dr. Dre reaches back to the medieval European tradition of the morality play. In a sequence of internal dialogues playing out in the conscience of three protagonists facing an urgent dilemma, Mr. Mathers personifies Evil, while Dr. Young performs the role of Good (or at least non-Evil). “Eddie” has to decide whether to rob a liquor store and hurt its clerk; “Stan” is faced with the choice of taking advantage of an intoxicated 15-year-old; and Grady must choose the correct punishment for his adulterous wife and her lover. The latter is the only conundrum with a conclusive ending within the song: even Mr. Young, the voice of moral reasoning, ends up embracing the (appropriately medieval) retribution Mr. Mathers suggests (“What am I sayin’? Shoot ‘em both Grady, where’s your gun at?”). More importantly, in the first two segments, consequentialist and deontological modes of moral reasoning are employed to illustrate that not only do actions have consequences, they ought to be firmly rooted in ethical principles (e.g., “Man, don’t do it, it’s not worth it to risk it! / You’re right!,” versus “Yo! This girl’s only fifteen years old / You shouldn’t take advantage of her, that’s not fair”). This is not a world of moral nihilism, and say what you want about the tenets underpinning Dr. Young’s interventions, at least they suggest the existence of an ethos.

12. 2pac – Brenda Got A Baby (1991)

Most rap songs devoted to broken families place the experience of the fatherless son and the blame that rests upon the absent father at the center of their narrative. In his second appearance on this list, his debut solo single, Mr. Shakur shifts our attention to the female teen and the broader social fabric:

I hear Brenda’s got a baby

But, Brenda’s barely got a brain

A d*** shame

The girl can hardly spell her name

(That’s not our problem, that’s up to Brenda’s family)

Well let me show ya how it affects the whole community

Brenda, the main character introduced here, is an illiterate 12-year-old born to a drug-addicted father and a negligent mother who see her as a convenient source of welfare payments (“Who didn’t really care to see, or give a damn if she / Went out and had a church of kids / As long as when the check came they got first dibs”). Growing up in an environment without communal institutions to fall back on, she is sexually abused by her cousin, the only male figure in her life, who impregnates her. After giving birth to her baby in the bathroom, she considers abandoning the infant in a trash heap, but her motherly instincts keep her from doing so. Without a social network to fall back upon, she starts selling crack until prostitution becomes her only attainable source of income. Even though “the social workers here everyday,” a community fallen apart after being hit with drugs, violence, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children can in no way keep the inevitable tragedy from materializing: “Prostitute, found slain, and Brenda’s her name, she’s got a baby.”

11. Bone, Thugs ‘n’ Harmony – Tha Crossroads (1997)

Shortly after his passing away, Cleveland rappers Layzie Bone, Flesh-n-Bone, Bizzy Bone, Krayzie Bone, and Wish Bone (these are, indeed, stage names, not the product of fate or parental playfulness) paid tribute to Eazy-E, the rapper and former N.W.A. member who offered them their first major-label contract. “Tha Crossroads” reflects upon his death and the many others in their spheres who have died early deaths, and on the afterlife facing both them and the Bones themselves. The fundamental driving force underlying their reflections is the Will of an omnipresent, almighty God (“And whatcha gonna do / When there ain’t nowhere to hide / Tell me what / When judgment comes for you / Cause it’s gonna come for you”). Incomprehension in the face of death (“And I’m asking the good Lord “Why?” / He sigh, he told me we live to die”) does not subtract from their faith in a higher authority or their willingness to obey his prescriptions (“God bless you working on a plan to Heaven / Follow the Lord all 24/7 days, God is who we praise”). How then does one respond to adversity?

Pray, and we pray and we pray, and we pray, and we pray

Everyday, everyday, everyday, everyday

and we pray, and we pray, and we pray, and we pray

There it is. There is “no mercy for thugs,” and eventually, we arrive at “tha crossroads.” Repent and change your ways before your time comes, and you will find eternal solace.

10. Kanye West – Jesus Walks (2004)

Another song that openly embraces religion in a way that is anathema to most “mainstream” cultural products is vivid proof of some of the suspicions many conservatives hold toward the sentinels of the movie and musical industry. Mr. West produced the first demos of this gospel-inspired exaltation of the baby Jesus years before its eventual release date, but met heavy resistance in his search for interested record labels. In his own words:

They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus

That means guns, sex, lies, video tapes

But if I talk about God my record won’t get played, huh?

His criticisms of the liberal media establishment do not distract from the core message of the song: That Jesus Christ is his Lord and Savior, and that he “walks” with everyone. His guidance is indispensable, for “the Devil trying to break me down.” And when he says everyone, he truly meets everyone, including the “victims of welfare,” brought to their knees by generations of at times well-intentioned liberal politicians who believe that throwing money at the problem is always the solution.

9. Lauryn Hill – Doo Wop (That Thing) (1998)

Pro-abstinence policies are a favorite target of liberal pundits. Former Fugees member Lauryn Hill, most recently in the news after being sentenced to a 3-month prison term for tax evasion (raising questions as to whether the IRS targeted her for her conservative leanings, or whether she was jailed for her history of posting videos to YouTube), views them differently:

Plus when you give it up so easy you ain’t even fooling him

If you did it then, then you probably f*** again

Talking out your neck sayin’ you’re a Christian

A Muslim sleeping with the gin

Now that was the sin that did Jezebel in

Instead of surrender in the face of temptation, Ms. Hill recommends modesty in dress:

Showing off your a** ’cause you’re thinking it’s a trend

Girlfriend, let me break it down for you again

It’s silly when girls sell their soul because it’s in

Look at where you be in hair weaves like Europeans

Fake nails done by Koreans

Similar lessons apply for men. Instead of being “more concerned with his rims and his Timbs than his women,” they need to cease being “quick to shoot the semen, stop acting like boys and be men.”

8. Warren G featuring Nate Dogg – Regulate (1994)

Transforming the government into a middle-class insurance company that regulates light bulb type and soda cup size inevitable distracts it from its core functions. Upholding the rule of law, enforcing property rights, and effectively exercising a monopoly on violence are among those core functions. Warren Griffin III, or Warren G, and Nathaniel Dwayne Hall, or Nate Dogg, describe what society looks like when those functions fall victim to rampant government expansion in this song from the soundtrack to the movie Above The Rim. More specifically, Mr. Griffin falls victim to a carjacking in his own community:

I’m gettin jacked, I’m breakin myself

I can’t believe they taking Warren’s wealth

(…)

They got guns to my head

I think I’m going down

I can’t believe this happenin’ in my own town

Mr. Griffin sees no obvious way out of this — law enforcement is nowhere to be seen — until Mr. Hall appears (“If I had wings I could fly / let me contemplate / I glanced in the cut and I see my homey Nate“). In the absence of a government capable of enforcing the rule of law, a spontaneous order emerges:

Sixteen in the clip and one in the hole

Nate Dogg is about to make some bodies turn cold

Now they droppin’ and yellin’

It’s a tad bit late

Nate Dogg and Warren G had to regulate

The initial set of property rights has been protected, and the song ends on an optimistic note, as the Long Beach Crips have taken it upon themselves to assure that anarchy will not reign: “213 will regulate.”

7. Lauryn Hill featuring Carlos Santana – To Zion (1998)

The second song from Ms. Hill’s album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill to be featured on this list is a strident anti-abortion anthem, a declaration of love to her son, Zion, and an expression of gratitude for the divine gift of life. On the abortion “option,” Ms. Hill has the following to say, despite the father being a married man:

I knew his life deserved a chance

But everybody told me to be smart

Look at your career they said,

“Lauryn, baby use your head”

But instead I chose to use my heart

The Biblical associations Ms. Hill’s son’s name, Zion, evokes are exploited fully. When she speaks of the “joy of my world” or “a gift so great,” whether she refers to her son specifically or to God’s love and generosity more generally is utterly unclear. But that is exactly the point.

6. Jay-Z – 99 Problems (2004)

Constitutional conservatism is on the rise, with Texas Senator Ted Cruz as its standard-bearer, and Mr. Carter must be pleased. This song is an outspoken defense of Fourth Amendment rights, and has been analyzed as such by law school professors. The second verse portrays a traffic stop: Mr. Carter has been caught speeding (“Well you was doing fifty-five in a fifty-four“), and he is worried that the illegal drugs in the trunk of his car (“In my trunk is raw“) will be found by the police officer who stopped him. Though the legal details are not entirely accurate, Mr. Carter’s forceful insistence on due process makes the arrival of a K9 unit and the detection of illicit drugs a requirement for a search of his trunk to be admissible. The K9 unit never arrives, hence the triumphant chorus (“I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain’t one“). A victory for the guilty, but a victory for individual rights in the face of discretionary law enforcement as well.

(On a sidenote, when Mr. Carter performed this song at the inaugural Staff Ball, celebrating president Obama’s victory, he and 4,000 Obama campaign operatives changed the word “bitch” in the chorus to “Bush,” as a part of their never-ending struggle for a new civility in the public arena.)

5. 2Pac – Dear Mama (1995)

In his third and last placing on this list, Mr. Shakur continues his exploration of family life on the brink of societal collapse. A retrospective on his mother’s attempts to provide for him and to raise him, it touches upon many by now familiar themes. There are the intrinsic hardships a single mother, especially a poor single mother faces:

I finally understand

for a woman it ain’t easy tryin’ to raise a man

You always was committed

A poor single mother on welfare, tell me how ya did it

(…)

And I could see you comin’ home after work late

You’re in the kitchen tryin to fix us a hot plate

Ya just workin’ with the scraps you was given

And mama made miracles every Thanksgivin’

Of course, Mr. Shakur’s own behavior, driven to an extent by the absence of a male father figure (“They say I’m wrong and I’m heartless, but all along / I was lookin’ for a father he was gone“), did not help. Welcomed into a gang, one of the few mediating institutions available in the absence of a functioning civil society, he starts dealing drugs:

I hung around with the thugs, and even though they sold drugs

They showed a young brother love

I moved out and started really hangin’

I needed money of my own so I started slangin’

We know, by now, how it all ends: Mr. Shakur becomes successful, and gets the chance to give back to his struggling mother. It could all have been different; and his father deserves nor receives any credit for putting him in a position where he had the opportunity to produce some of the greatest rap songs of all time.

4. Will Smith featuring Coko — Men In Black (1997)

Pretty much all of the songs on this list have one, clear, unambiguous conservative reading to offer. “Men in Black,” from the movie by the same name, on the other hand, illustrates both a more authoritarian and a libertarian approach to national security. The national-security state, reviled by the likes of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, embraced by Arizona Senator John McCain, is praised in this upbeat song about a shadowy law enforcement agency, dressed in black, that protects the people from extraterrestrial threats.

A superficial reading suggests explicit support for an executive branch so unitary, no one outside of it is entitled even to memories of its actions (“Here come the Men in Black / Galaxy defenders / Here come the Men in Black / They won’t let you remember”). The agency officials are not subject to any kind of democratic control (“But yo we ain’t on no government list / We straight don’t exist, no names and no fingerprints”), yet watch over everyone and everything, presumably including AP and FNC reporters (“Cameras zoom, on the impending doom / But then like boom black suits fill the room up”).
Of course, this over-the-top portrayal of a benevolent government capable of providing complete security without any checks or balances invites a different reading as well. The listener is reminded of the skepticism he ought to feel (“So go witcha life, forget that Roswell crap / Show love to the black suit”), but told not to worry (“But trust me if we ever show in your section / Believe me, it’s for your own protection”). That is obviously not an order free citizens ought to obey: putting up a 13-hour filibuster is the least one can do to demand transparency and openness from the Men in Black.

3. Daddy Yankee – Gasolina (2004)

Ramón Luis Ayala Rodríguez, or Daddy Yankee, is the only artist on this list to have actively campaigned for a Republican presidential candidate (John McCain, in 2008). Named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2006, Daddy Yankee’s song focuses more specifically on one particular policy area than any other song on this list. In Mr. Rodríguez’s own words, it is about “energy independence.” But it is not a flimsy all-of-the-above with massive transfers of wealth to campaign donors who invest in Solyndras that he is referring to with that term. “Drill, baby, drill” is his policy proposal, which, of course, dovetailed well with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s use of that chant during the 2008 campaign. It is hard not to think of the female voice in the song as a Governor Palin avant la lettre when she sings “Dame más gasolina.” And when Mr. Rodriguéz requests a tribute to the internal combustion engine (“Zúmbale mambo pa’ que mis gatas prendan los motores”), she is the one who responds (“Ella prende las turbinas”). Given all this, listening to this song a decade later, it is hard not to hear a call for more fracking.

2. Jay Sean featuring Pitbull – I’m All Yours (2012)

Senator Rubio, the Republican from Florida, believes that Pitbull, formerly Mr. 305, now Mr. Worldwide, only produces “party songs.” In a December 2012 GQ interview he went on to state: “There’s no message for him, compared to like an Eminem. But look, there’s always been a role for that in American music. There’s always been a party person, but he’s a young guy. You know, maybe as he gets older, he’ll reflect in his music more as time goes on. I mean, he’s not Tupac.” Senator Rubio may want to reconsider those words, as “I’m All Yours,” Pitbull’s collaborative effort with Jay Sean, contradicts them strikingly. Not only is it an aggressive tribute to lifelong faithfulness (“Girl I want this for the rest of my life / I’m all yours”), it also attacks the totalitarian Castro regime (“My mind is free / Opposite of Cuba”). Senator Rubio may expect rap lyrics to contain detailed corporate tax reform proposals, but this is as good as it gets.

1. The Notorious B.I.G. – Juicy (1994)

“Of course,” you’re thinking. “I knew all along.” The sine qua non of conservative rap, by Christopher George Latore Wallace. A classical rags-to-riches story, The Notorious B.I.G.’s solo debut single is an unapologetic tribute to the Republican Party’s domestic policy agenda. After denouncing the soft bigotry of low expectations (“This album is dedicated to all the teachers that told me I’d never amount to nothin’”), Mr. Wallace reviews how he “made the change from a common thief / to up close and personal with Robin Leach.” Growing up in modest circumstances, personal and professional success “was all a dream,” but this American Dream did eventually come to fruition, home ownership in the land of plenty included (“Condos in Queens, indo for weeks”). Despite an adolescence marked by financial struggles (“We used to fuss when the landlord dissed us / No heat, wonder why Christmas missed us”), Mr. Wallace has become one of those job creators subject to the top marginal income tax rate:

50 inch screen, money green leather sofa

Got two rides, a limousine with a chauffeur

Phone bill about two G’s flat

No need to worry, my accountant handles that

Life has treated him well, thanks to his skillful hard work (“Now I’m in the limelight / ’cause I rhyme tight / Time to get paid”), and this earned success is cause for celebration, as it has brought an end to his participation in a culture of dependence on Big Government: “Celebratin’ every day, no more public housin’.” But it doesn’t end there: Mr. Wallace now helps the less fortunate with private charity (“And I’m far from cheap, I smoke skunk with my peeps all day / Spread love, it’s the Brooklyn way”). And this dream is open to all who dare dream: “You know very well who you are / Don’t let ‘em hold you down, reach for the stars.”

And that’s the list! I hope it has been an enjoyable read. Of course the precise ranking here was, to a certain extent, arbitrary, but that seems unavoidable in such situations. And of course, there are songs that I was forced to leave off, for there is a plethora of conservative rap music out there. Think of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “No Holds Barred,” a stirring defense of the right to (armed) self-defense, or Kat Dahlia’s “Gangsta,” a tribute to rugged individualism (“You say you a gangsta, that don’t impress me none / You say you a gangsta, ain’t seen a thing you done / I do it all on myself, I ain’t getting help/ From no one, from no one”) that includes a nice reference to Ronald Reagan’s moment of spark that led him to victory in the New Hamsphire primary in 1980 (“I’m paying for this session”).

In any case, I believe this exercise has been valuable, for there are more people than I thought who cling to bitter, narrow conceptions of textual analysis. In this rambling rant on The New Republic’s website, for example, two adult males assert time and time again that auctorial intent is the only possible source of meaning. This leads to fascinating lines of reasoning. Take the following example: Beanie Siegel has committed many violent crimes, hence he is a liberal, and hence his songs must be liberal. This is an extreme position that I am unwilling to adopt, but one that flows quite naturally from the typical five-year-old’s views on discourse analysis. A more nuanced view lends itself better to the production of fruitful interpretations. As Jacques Derrida said in 1968: “La signification ne s’annonce qu’à partir du fonctionnement d’un réseau d’oppositions et de distinctions; c’est-à-dire de différences – sans termes positives.” Indeed. If you’re one of those bitter clingers, one of those Taliban of text linguistics, a semiotic Stalinist, take his wise words to heart and listen to some conservative rap again. Conveniently, here’s a Spotify playlist for you.

Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailMore Sharing Services

Read more »