Ukrainian Banannas. Of course there are no bananas growing in the Ukraine, breadbasket of Europe that it may be.

Listening to the news on the protests, especially the BBC interviews with the protesters who speak English and love capitalism, takes me back to when Germany opened up the German-German boarder. That event is thought of in the US under the cliche of the 'fall of the Berlin wall'. I was a long way from Berlin when the DDR (East Germany) dropped all travel restrictions. I was near the boarder at Fulda. I am sure you saw those photos of people celebrating, tearing off pieces of the wall in late night revelry. When I got to Berlin I was told that most of that crowd was drunk and West German. A lot of them were skinheads from both sides. There were apologies, excuses, explanations and lament for the lawlessness and destructiveness. That night was Kristalnacht, the night of glass known for attacks on pre-war jewish businesses. That night is now call the Day of German Unity as one history is rewritten and another ignored. So where were the crowds of liberated East Germans on the Day of German Unity if they were not drunk on the wall waiving a flag? At the bank lining up for their "Begrussungsgeld" (fucking sue me if I spelled it wrong) that "Federal" West Germany made available for whoever "escaped" from "Democratic" East Germany. West German law made all East Germans into citizens the moment they set foot west and provided them with some pocket money to start their new life. More funds and help came later, Begrussungsgeld means "Welcome Money" The crowds of East Germans made themselves welcome at the bank and went straight to the shopping centers. You knew an East German for the unstylish clothes and the shopping bags in those first days. In the shopping bags were bananas, among other things. There were a lot of good reasons not to like the DDR. It was a police state. It was a major betrayal of socialism. Socialists all over the world were fighting for democratic rights. Nobody looked to the DDR for anything because they were one of the places dragging the name of socialism through the mud. The Berlin Wall was the symbol of everything that was wrong with the Soviet sphere. It was a stupid wall because with the right policies they could have forced the West to build a wall. A police state is not about personal choice or personal freedom. The DDR was a poorly run police state. Economically it was not living up to its potential and socially it was a disaster. All that aside, its time was over and it needed to suffer an end in order to end the suffering of its people. What many West Germans said to me about the DDR would give you pause. They said all the right, good democratic, post fascist, new German things. Yet somehow there was more energy, details and time spent on what you could buy, what you could drive and what the speed limit was under communist opression. I

heard much more talk about the traffic police than the secret police. A West German thought of a 100 KPH speed limit as tyrany. From many East Germans I heard the insistence that they become a NORMAL country. NORMAL was West Germany. NORMAL was where one could afford quality, high speed cars and where stores were filled with such things as bananas. The East Germans were very aware of the wealth of the West which they watched on TV. There was a great hunger for access to West German wealth. East Germans felt poor. They were poor compared to West Germany, but not compared to where bananas are grown. East German poverty was standing in line for locally grown foods and not having bananas. Even speaking German and having lived in that country, I will hold back on how much I know about the thinking of those who lived on either side of that wall. What I do know a bit more about is bananas. Bananas do not grow in Germany. They don't. NORMAL in the West is to go to the store and buy things that come from the third world. Poor people in the third world grow the bananas, make the radios, put the Ikea into its box and slave to serve our standard of living that they can not afford themselves. After my years of living where all we had was the damn coffee, bananas and other export crops without any chance of a fraction of the lifestyle of any part of Europe it felt to me like those in the East were in a big hurry to get their hands on the benefits of some of that third world poverty. Many did not want freedom, they wanted a share of the cash. Bananas come from exploitation and oppression. That is where bananas come from. Same goes for cacao, coffee and a bunch of other things found in stores in NORMAL countries. The system is called capitalism and the relationship is called imperialism. Old words that are not just Soviet era slogans. Not for today's cup of coffee, not for today's tank of gas. I wonder if the Ukrainians who jumped to the square because their president refused to sign the deal with the European Union felt that their chance to get in on that deal, to become part of NORMAL, to be one of the rich nations that eat the bananas and not one one of the poor nations that grows them, was not slipping from their fingers. How many were motivated by noble desire to fight the very real corruption and how many were just hungry to get at the wealth that they see to the West? In effect, how hungry were they for the wealth of the West? I heard a lot of interviews from the protests, because the BBC only covered the story from that side. It certainly did not speak with the government representatives or supporters unless they spoke English poorly. What I did hear a lot of was vitriol against the president, maybe deserved and complaints about the economy, maybe deserved. More than a couple were focused on what they could buy and how much money they could make. It reminded me of some Germans.

Of course there were good, brave people fighting for democracy in both German and the Ukraine. In Germany they were swept aside at the first election. The leaders of the crowd were not the elected of the nation. There are all kinds of bad things one could and should say about the disposed government of the Ukraine and the Russian government's role and our media is saying them on the hour. How about the questions our media is not asking? How many people of the Ukraine supported those crowds in the street? The only poll I ever heard said about 45% at the most. Not bad, but that is also how many Ukrainians voted against the sitting government. What do the other 55% think? The BBC and their NPR understudies report on the views of the protesters being the will of the Ukrainian people. All those other people? Not many interviews of them. Not much reporting on polls either. I wish Occupy had had 45% support. I wish we had been given the chance to protest for as long as they did in the Ukraine before the first crackdown. We were swept from the streets a lot sooner than they tried it in the Ukraine too. We had bananas and all kinds of food that we get from the second tier American nations. We committed the crime of feeding them to homeless people. So this new government is the legitimate government? It is not the government that was agreed upon to end the crisis. So why was that agreement never respected? The president fled, so did many of the parliament's members. WHY? How did we go from a peace agreement to protesters occupying the presidential ministry inside 24 hours? In all the interviews, we have not found time to interview any of the members of parliament who fled? Where are they? Why did they go? So whoever is left in parliament considers themselves the legitimate government. We should accept this why? That rump parliament has a mandate to remove a president? To sign a new deal with the European Union? To wreck relations with Russia? To outlaw the use of the Russian language in law? To outlaw the two majority political parties of Ukraine? All this without a new election? If our Undersecretary of State does not want to explain what she means by "fuck the EU" then maybe we could get some answers about what she means about the US spending five billion dollars on political projects inside the Ukraine since it has become post-soviet? Five billion is a lot of money to be trowing around a weak economy on politics. How is this not interference in their internal affairs? And secretary Kerry telling the world press that it is ever so unacceptable to send your troops into a country to defend your national interest? Whatever moral right the US has to make that claim despite our invasion of Iraq, crumbles in light of our entire history in Latin America. What kind of press do we have when Kerry can say something so cynical and not one journalist challenges him? If only some of the protesters are from the ultra right, getting only some of the

portfolios in this new government we call legitimate, then what do the other protesters want? Bananas?