Pepe Escobar reporting from Ukraine

Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian journalist who gives his readers glimpses into war-torn areas of the globe, sometimes his gives geo-political 'big picture' analysis, this article is the former.

Escobar became a regular guest on the several alternative podcasts that rose in opposition to the American 'Wars of Terror' and that's where I first encountered him.  He is a great guest, engaging, knowledgeable, each time reporting from a new part of the world, cynical, and has an infectious laugh.  He follows in a long political tradition of South American anti-colonial intellectuals. If you listen to a Pepe Escobar interview, you still find yourself wanting to hang out with him at the end.

Escobar spent March in the Ukraine, in the "rebel" town of Donetsk¹ and wrote an article on it and Counterpunch.org has published it. It is a strange article - just snap-shots of the town and the people - but it packed an emotional punch when I read it. It brought back memories of when I discovered what had happened to Yugoslavia ². Unlike wars if the Mid-east, Asia or Africa, I could see this happening here, to me, my family and friends³. Like Yugoslavia these are middle-class Europeans living in an industrial town; a town under bombardment from "government" trucks with 40 missile-tubes on their back.  Canada supports that "government"⁴.

This is raw journalism, shards of everyday life.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/01/howling-in-donetsk/


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Footnotes

1 - Like Sudbury, Doneskt is a mining town created by Englishmen. In 1869, Welsh businessman, John Hughes, built a steel plant and several coal mines in the mineral rich village of 'Alexander-ville' (Aleksandr-ovka); the town was re-named 'Hughes-ville' (Yuz-ovka).  During the 1920-1930s The Soviet revolution would modernize the town, with new factories and plants, new infrastructure, and a new name, 'Steel-town' (Stalino). After being razed to the ground by the Germans and occupied by the Italians, it was re-built using forced-labour in the wake of WWII and renamed 'Donetsk' after a nearby river.

2 - I highly recommend Joe Sacco's three graphic novels based on his time in Yugoslavia: Soba, Safe Area Gorazde and The Fixer. I have lost these by lending them out to students, but I read them so many times they are part of me now.

3 - One of the rules of modern geo-politics is that the mass-killing of 'white' people is not allowed. Eastern Europeans/Slavs have long been classified as only 'half-white' by Western powers - especially disobedient Eastern Europeans, like Russians or Serbians, are often portrayed as having 'Mongol-blood' or having some essential 'dirtiness'.

4 - http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/31/canadas-political-mainstream-backs-war-in-ukraine/

I really liked that article.  It does a good job of describing what is happening to the people in the Ukraine.  I have read enough articles that state some of what Pepe has described but they failed to capture the human side of the conflict.  It really helped ring home what is actually occurring there as well as punches a hole clean through the western propaganda that is relentlessly pushed in the media.  It seems daily there is another anti Russian story pushed though and the call to stop them.