Archives: Articles

By Matt Peppe

To listen to U.S. officials talk about it, you would think that Russia had just instigated World War III. President  Obama  framed his criticism in terms of international law, saying that Russian actions “are in violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Secretary of State John Kerry  ramped up the rhetoric even more, claiming an “incredible act of aggression.” Then he said this gem: “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text.” Hillary Clinton went further, saying that Russia’s rationale in moving troops to Crimea was reminiscent of Hitler’s during Germany’s invasions of Poland and Czechoslovakia.

The hypocrisy of Kerry and Clinton, who voted for the invasion of Iraq, which has caused  more than 1 million deaths  and left many millions more orphans, widows and refugees, is obvious to anyone with a pulse. Obama, while he did speak out against the Iraq war, has escalated the war in Afghanistan. He is now refusing to withdraw all American troops from the country. To leave the obvious double standards aside for a moment, it is instructive to actually examine what Russia did to draw such righteous outrage from the American foreign policy elite.

Last week the democratically-elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, fled the country after weeks of street protests, which devolved into dangerous riots led by opposition groups with strong links to violent  Neo-Nazis . Yanukovych surely is not a sympathetic figure; credible reports that he and his cronies have robbed the country of billions of much-needed dollars are likely true. However, he was elected by the people to serve as President and had only 1 year remaining on his term.

After his ouster, Oleksandr Turchynov was installed as the new President. The un-elected Turchynov, who enjoys the support of the U.S. and Europe, decided to fire the governors selected by the democratically-elected Yanukovych and appoint in their place a group of oligarchs . Russia has recognized that the Ukranian Parliament, which was elected by the people, is a legitimate governing body. However, they have refused to recognize the unelected Turchynov.

In response to the Ukranian turmoil, Russia has moved thousands of troops into the Crimea region, where Russia has a naval base, in a bloodless invasion. Reports describe Russian soldiers mostly standing around, surrounding Ukranian troops and government buildings without using force. To say Russian troops did this without firing a shot is not quite accurate, as they reportedly fired a couple of warning shots. But there are no indications of any violence, injuries or escalation of military activities.

It is important to consider the history of Crimea in making sense of the current situation. While it is technically now part of Ukraine, it had been for  more than 200 years part of Imperial Russia . About 60 years ago, for no particular reason anyone seems to understand, Soviet Premier Nikkita Krushchev decided to gift the territory to Ukraine, while Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union. It would seem more like an intra-firm accounting measure than a spin-off of a segment of a company. Rumors have claimed that Krushchev may have been drinking when he made the decision.

When the Soviet Union suddently broke apart about 25 years ago, Crimea remained part of Ukraine. But not exactly. It is an autonomous region. The majority of its residents are ethnically Russian and almost all residents speak the Russian language. After the Ukranain President was ousted, the majority protested against the new coup-President.  Russia has said it wants to protect the region, and it obviously wants to secure its extremely strategic naval base. “The  opposition parties seized control  of parliament and began passing draconian new laws often unanimously, as neo-Nazi thugs patrolled the scene.” This led the Crimean government to openly call for Russian protection.

Eric Draitser , examining the ramifications of international law, notes several factors in Russia’s favor. Established treaties between Russia and Ukraine establish that Crimea is a strategic area for Russia; Russian naval bases are undoubtedly a strategic national interest; and, most importantly, the new coup President assumed power in a flagrantly illegitimate way.

“This is a blatant violation of Ukraine’s Constitution, not to mention international law and the accepted principles of modern democracy. With Yanukovich having taken refuge in Russia, and still being the legal President of Ukraine, isn’t it fair to say that Russia is acting as the guarantor of international law, rather than its enemy?”

Now, to get back to the American hypocrisy. As noted before, the Iraq war has killed more than 1 million people. 1 million. Russia in it’s “aggression” has killed 0. Kerry and Clinton both knew in 2002-3 that the war was being hyped up on phony pretenses. The nonsense about WMDs was always a transparent rationalization of a preordained decision, even before the intel turned out to be false. Dozens of countries possess WMDs, and none more than the United States. In the Middle East, no country comes close to Israel.

Kerry and Clinton made a political calculation that they did not want to appear weak, so they sounded the war drums along with everybody else. Now, the disastrous situation is conveniently contained thousands of miles overseas. But when the history books are written, the Iraq war will go down as another holocaust on the same scale as Vietnam. Kerry and Clinton are responsible for enabling it to happen.

Obama’s words carry the most weight. First of all, in denouncing Russian violation of international law, Obama threatened that “there will be costs.” Remember again that Russia has no killed or injured a single person. The very next morning it was announced that three people were killed in a  drone strike  in Yemen, including at least one “alleged Al Qaeda fighter.”

The person killed was “alleged” in the same way that hundreds of thousands of dead Vietnamese peasants were “alleged” Viet Cong. He was an alleged militant and he deserved a death sentence because Obama said so. Instead of a trial to determine his guilt or innocence, Obama served as his judge, jury and executioner. This is blatant violation of the principles of the 800-year-old Magna Carta.

This comes weeks after the news that another Hellfire missle attack in Yemen struck a wedding party and killed at least 15 people. After the attack, the Yemeni Parliament voted to ban drone strikes (and respect Yemeni sovereignty), but ” analysts say  politicians have limited powers and are unlikely to have an impact on Washington’s campaign.”

Obama has also recently announced that he will circumvent Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, who is refusing to sign a security agreement with the United States that would let troops maintain their occupation of the country past the end of the year. That is Obama’s way of respecting another nation’s sovereignty.

Beyond these politicians, it is instructive to consider the U.S. government’s record of respecting sovereignty and international law since WWII.

“The scorecard reads as follows,” writes  William Blum . “Between 1945 and 2005 the United States has attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US has caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair.”

Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Grenada, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq (again), Haiti (again), Libya (again), Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia are the most recent victims to suffer the consequences of illegal, violent U.S. military interventions.

There were also Reagan’s proxy terror wars in Central America. In 1984, the World Court found the U.S. guilty in  Nicaragua v. United States  of encouraging human rights violations, using force against another country and violating their sovereignty. The U.S. was ordered to pay reparations. After vetoing enforcement of the court decision in the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. mercilessly denied paying Nicaragua anything. To this day the country has never received a penny from their aggressor, much like Vietnam before them.

In Israel-Palestine there is an illegal occupation that has lasted for 45 years. A recent UN human rights panel has said that Israel could be tried for  war crimes  for stealing Palestinian land, water, and resources for the benefit of Israeli settler-colonists. The U.S. has not only supported the violation of Palestine’s territory and the constant atrocities against Palestinian people, but has actively funded the Israeli occupation and apartheid system. Thousands of people have been killed during the nearly half-century-long occupation, more than 1,400 during the terrorist assault on Gaza in 2009 alone. There was no similar outrage from American officials then.

The U.S. accusations hold that if a military crosses its own borders into a foreign country then this is always aggression regardless of any extenuating circumstances. There is no hypothetical situation in which this would be permissible. To ask the obvious question, why does the U.S. have hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in giant bases in Germany, the U.K., South Korea, Japan, Honduras and other countries?

The logic has always been that they are there to “protect stability” if a situation arose that would call for such. But if the situation in the Ukraine and Crimea is not one that requires protecting stability on Russia’s own border, how could any situation ever require U.S. troops to do so thousands of miles away? If Obama actually believed what he was saying, he would call for all U.S. military bases outside the country to be shut down and the troops sent home immediately.

I am not suggesting that Russia is right or that they are in compliance with international law, merely that there is an extremely important historical context that U.S. officials are ignoring, if not flat out denying. They are trying to demonize Putin, turning him into the next Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi, Castro or Chavez. Much like the two minutes hate of Orwell’s 1984, the state needs official enemies to survive. Their evilness provides the contrast to the state’s own benevolence. In reality, Russia is acting rationally and in accordance with their interests and those of ethnic Russians outside the relatively new borders of the Russian Federation.

There is a reason that instead of bringing Russia’s actions to the appropriate international bodies for judgement, the U.S. is using a P.R. campaign to lambaste them so hypocritically in the press. The U.S. government doesn’t care about international law and never has unless they can use it to score political points against someone they designate as their enemy, which is to say someone who refuses to accept the U.S.-imposed neoliberal world order. When it comes to aggression, violation of sovereignty, and respect for international law, the U.S. government and the officials who comprise it are the antithesis of credible.

Matt Peppe holds a master’s degree in Public Administration from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at SUNY Albany

14 March, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

‘ All that glitters is not gold; all that shivers is not cold’

Mythology has it that Midas, the king of Phyrgia, was able to turn everything he touched into gold — ‘the Midas Touch’.  According to Aristotle, the legendry figure died of starvation as a result of his greed to transmute everything from its natural substance to gold.    This myth is a tragic reality when it comes to America and its neocolonial adventures; America’s reach into Ukraine may well be the ‘touch’ that will end America as we know it today.

For decades, American neocons [1] have engaged in coups, false flag operations, covert and overt wars in order to institute their goal of global domination.   The end of the Cold War emboldened them and 9/11 enabled them.   Nations and societies became battlefields facilitated by the concept of ‘ jihad’ versus‘crusade’ [i] thanks to neocon Bernard Lewis who initiated this idea.   As country after country fell to America’s ruthless touch —  Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, (attempts in Venezuela and Iran), little attention was paid to covert activities against Russia (and China) considered to pose a challenge to America’s global domination.

Failrure of the 2004 Western-backed Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the massive 2006 protests in Crimea against NATO’s invasion with slogans such as ” Occupiers go home!” which prompted the parliament of autonomous Ukraine  to declare Crimea a “NATO-free  territory” ( Euronews archive ), sent Washington’s neocons into a spin mode, especially since NATO and U.S. have been trying to encircle Russia since 1991.

Azar Gat, Ezer Weizman professor of National Security at Tel Aviv University writing for the powerful and influential Council on Foreign Relations publication ( Foreign Affairs, July-August 2007 ) emphasized ‘the significant challenge emanating from China and Russia operating under “authoritarian capitalist” poised for a comeback. ‘

Global domination demanded curbing Russia (and China).   Depriving Russia of its Black Sea Fleet in Crimea and  Russia’s access to Syria’s Tartus Port are no doubt a crucial part of this strategy.   As importantly,  Russia’s gas exports to Europe had to be curbed.

To this end, overt and covert actions were put in place.  CIA/State Department propaganda voice, Radio Free Europe, announced in 2010 that “ Ukraine has been the target of democracy-promoting Western foundations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), for a quarter of a century” (well prior to 1991 dateline admitted to by Victoria Nuland).   NED’s counterpart in England, the UK funded Westminster Foundation for Democracy was an active partner in the endeavor.

It was the Westminster Foundation that coopted the “Ukrainian Foundation for Democracy ” – The People’s First Foundation that later that same year would become a member of the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC).  Of particular relevance is the cast of characters who would shape things to come in Ukraine (to be discussed shortly).

“Democracy” promotion aside, the possible and likely role of United States Special Operations Command (USSOC ) said to be present in 120 countries as of 2011, and growing (potentially in over 140 countries todate) mut also be considered. Working with SOC is CIA’s Special Activities Division (SAD) and its departments Special Operations Group (SOG) and Political Action Group (POG), which engage in covert activities related to political influence and psychological operations.

As images of Cocktail Molotovs and sniper shootings and deaths found their way into living rooms across the globe, Europe (Ashton) concealed doubts cast over Yanukovch’s complicity  in the  sniper shootings, facilitating his overthrow in trumped up charges.    There is no good reason for the Western backers of the mob government not to investigate the sniper killings unless a)they themselves were complicit, b) they  had full knowledge of the actions, or c) concealing the actions was in their interest.  No investigation has taken place to date.

Many scholars have voiced concern that the U.S. is backing neo-Nazis in Ukraine; never mind the neo-Nazis – the EU and the United States have embraced terrorism and have sided with terrorists over a democratically elected president.   Although there is no universal definition of terrorism, Title 22 of the U.S. Code, Section 2656f(d) defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.”

This must be an incomprehensible part of the US/EU “war on terror”!   These actions marginalize those of the marines in Afghanistan who urinated on dead corpses .  With their backing of terrorists, the US and EU partners, in effect, have urinated on the graves of all who died in the despicable ‘war on terror’, including Allied soldiers.

This much said, one must surely ask why it is that the Jewish community is supporting the neo-Nazis rise.  Why is it that the presence of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers who led rebel groups has not been questioned and addressed?   Furthermore, why have Jewish leaders voiced  support for the coup and its leaders, and they have chosen to direct their anger and venom toward Russia and President Putin in a letter ?

Perhaps, familiarizing oneself with the executive members of the aforementioned USUBC may cast some light on this bizarre behavior.  Especially noteworthy are  names and organizations among the senior advisors to the USUBC are from pro-Israel think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and Brookings, and  Board of Directors executives selected from powerful players at weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon and Boeing (See http://www.usubc.org/site/recent-news/people-first-foundation-joins-u-s-ukraine-business-council-usubc ).

Undoubtedly, the cast of characters and their involvement in Ukraine would help ensure the safety of the Ukrainian Jews – especially in light of the fact that Israel is poised to play a huge role in eliminating Europe’s reliance on Russian gas and supplying Europe with gas it has stolen from the Palestinians  – and Syrians.  Or as the New York Post put it last month:  “ Israel’s fortune is Putin’s horror ”

The planning of this “horror” has been in the making for some time. Perhaps the most revealing and interesting article is one penned by David Wurmser writing for the Jewish policy Center titled The Strategic Impact of Israel’s Export of Natural Gas .  Referring to the newly found stolen gas in 2009, he writes “Israel and its neighbor now sit atop roughly two years’ worth of European consumption”. He further suggests “even modest amounts of Israeli gas exports can carry significant strategic leverage”.  Wurmser opines that “The short-term inflexibility of gas trade and the difficulty of replacing disrupted supply also imply that energy prices for consumers and revenues for suppliers can be easily manipulated by marginal increases or decreases.”

Citing Europe’s gas vulnerability, Wurmser posits “Europe’s grim reality could represent a unique window of opportunity for Israel to nail down long-term agreements and align export policy with a broader effort to reset Israeli-European relations.”

In December of last year, The Jerusalem Post reported that not only did Hungary seek Israeli gas as an alternative to Russian gas, but it also offered to Israel access to its state-owned gas storage and offered Hungary “as a central European distribution hub for Israeli gas”.

As recently as March 11, Rigzone cited Gideon Tadmor, CEO of Avner Oil, speaking at a conference in Tel-Aviv: “”With recent events in Europe… and the aspiration of different countries to diversify their gas supply, that puts another spotlight on our massive resources and transforms our story into a global one,” ( a must read ).

It then should come as no surprise that the Ukrainian Jewish leaders denounce any threat from the presence of ‘neo-Nazis’ claiming that they can take care of themselves.  No doubt this is the case.   But will Ukraine, a state that is not one nation, survive the assault on its diversity and its sovereignty?   The unforeseen circumstances, the unpredicted reactions may well turn Ukraine into the last of America’s ‘Midas touch’.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the role of lobby groups in influencing US foreign policy.

 

14 March, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

By Medea Benjamin

When I boarded the plane to Cairo, Egypt, to make sure everything was in place for the women’s delegation headed to Gaza, I had no reason to think I’d end up in a jail cell at the Cairo airport and then violently deported.

The trip was in response to a call from women in Gaza to CODEPINK and other groups asking us to bring 100 women from around the world to Gaza for March 8, International Women’s Day. They wanted us to see, first-hand, how the seven-year Israeli blockade had made their situation intolerable. They talked about being unable to protect themselves and their families from frequent Israeli attacks and how the closing of the borders with both Israel and Egypt has made it impossible for them to travel abroad or even to other parts of Palestine. They wanted us to witness how the shortages of water, electricity, and fuel, coupled with severe restrictions on imports and exports, condemn most of the 1.6 million Palestinians in Gaza to a life of misery.

So we helped put together a 100-women delegation with representatives from France, Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, the UK, Ireland, Canada and the United States. The delegates, who ranged in age from 18 to 84, included Nobel Peace Prize winners, doctors, writers and students. We were also bringing hundreds of solar lamps and boxes of medical supplies for the women.

The only ways to enter Gaza is by land–either via the border with Israel or Egypt. Israel restricts entry to non-governmental and official delegations, so our only option was to go through Egypt. CODEPINK had already organized eight delegations to Gaza via Egypt since 2008, so we thought we knew the ropes. We had organized these delegations during Mubarak’s reign and after the revolution, but not since the July 2013 coup that toppled the government of Mohamed Morsi.

As in the past, we furnished the Foreign Ministry and the local Embassies with all the information they requested to get the delegates the necessary permits to cross the Sinai (which has become a dangerous place) and cross into Gaza.They said as long the situation was not too dangerous in the Sinai, they would help us get safely to the border. Otherwise, we would celebrate International Women’s Day together in Cairo.

I went early, on March 3, as part of the logistics team. When I arrived at the airport in Cairo, I was taken aside and put in a separate room. First I was told “no problem, no problem, just checking the papers, just 10 minutes.” After 5 hours I realized that there was, indeed, a problem, as I was taken to a jail cell at the airport. Never once was I told what the problem was. Thank goodness I had hidden my phone and was able to get the word out about my plight over Twitter. Friends and family started immediately contacting the US Embassy for help.

At 8am, 5 plain-clothed men with handcuffs came into the cell, looking very ominous. One said, “Come with us, we’re putting you on a plane and deporting you.” I was scared to go with them and I had just received a message that someone from the US Embassy was just ten minutes away. I politely asked if I could wait for an embassy official or if I could call the Foreign Ministry to straighten out what must be a miscommunication.

Instead, the men grabbed me, threw me on the ground, put their knees into my back, yanked my arms back so violently that I heard the pop of my arm coming out of my shoulder, and put two sets of handcuffs on me. I was screaming from the pain so they took my scarf, stuffed it in my mouth, and dragged me through the halls of the airport to a waiting Turkish Airline plane.

I was in such agony from a dislocated shoulder—you could see the bone just sticking up in the air—that the airline personnel refused to let me on and insisted that the Egyptians call an ambulance. When the ambulance arrived, the doctor immediately gave me a shot to ease the pain and insisted that I had to go to the hospital. By this time there were about 20 men on the tarmac, arguing about what to do with me while the Turkish plane with 175 people on board was prevented from taking off. After about an hour of fighting, the Egyptian security prevailed: I was not allowed go to the hospital but was forced to board the plane, with the two men who most abused me sitting on either side of me.

As soon as we were in the air, the stewardess asked if there was a doctor on the plane. Finally, a stroke of luck! Not only was there a doctor, but he was an orthopedic surgeon. He created a makeshift operating bed in the aisle of the plane and got the stewardesses to assist. “Usually I’d put you out before doing this, so I warn you this will be painful,” he said as he manipulated my arm back into its socket. Once we got to Turkey, I went to a hospital for further treatment before flying back home. My doctors here say it will take months of physical therapy before I can recover full use of my arm.

Along with the physical trauma, I am left with many unanswered questions:

* Why didn’t the US Embassy in Egypt ever help me during this 17-hour ordeal, especially when I made it clear I was in danger? When questioned by a journalist at a State Department briefing, spokeswoman Jen Psaki falsely claimed that the Embassy had provided me with “appropriate consular assistance.” I have since lodged a complaint about the lack of assistance, and you can send a message to the State Department, too.

*If the Egyptian officials were so brutal to me– a petite, 61-year-old American woman who has dedicated her life to peace–what are they doing to their own citizens and others languishing in their prisons? And why is Secretary Kerry considering a resumption of US military aid to this brutal regime? According to a recent Amnesty International report, the current human rights situation is characterized by repeated excessive use of force by the security forces, leading to the death of hundreds of protesters; increasingly severe restrictions on freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and freedom of expression, as well as academic freedoms; the arbitrary imprisonment of protest leaders, university students, journalists and others; and a failure to protect vulnerable groups, including minorities and women. Take a minute to send a message to the Egyptian embassy in the US and tell them to end the government’s brutal crackdown on peaceful citizens.

*Did Israel put the pressure on Egypt to do a last-minute about-face to keep us out of Gaza? In the end, only 17 of our members made it into Cairo (but not to Gaza) and the rest were deported from the airport. The question of Israeli influence is one we’ll probably never have answered, but during the very time we were supposed to be there, rocket fire was exchanged between militants from Gaza and the Israeli army. This shows the vulnerability of the women of Gaza, caught between the Israeli siege, Egyptian blockade, and internal extremists. That’s why it was so important for us to go there, to show our solidarity with the civilian population. But that will have to wait until Egypt no longer deems peace activists to be a threat to their national security.

As long as the world ignores the ongoing siege of Gaza, almost 2 million people will continue to languish in the world’s largest open-air prison. If Secretary of State Kerry wants the US to be a meaningful peace broker and to reach an agreement that includes dignity and human rights for the Palestinians, he can no longer continue to support military aid to the perpetrators of the blockade: Israel and Egypt.

Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org), cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace, is the author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.

14 March, 2014

CommonDreams.org

 

By Johannes Stern and Alex Lantier

Ahead of Sunday’s referendum on the independence of Crimea, Berlin and Washington are escalating a campaign of threats and sanctions against Russia, risking civil war in Ukraine and war with Russia itself.

Addressing the German parliament on Thursday, Chancellor Angela Merkel warned of a “catastrophe” unless Russia backs down. “Ladies and gentlemen, if Russia continues on its course of the past weeks, it will not only be a catastrophe for Ukraine,” she said. “We would not only see it, also as neighbors of Russia, as a threat. And it would not only change the European Union’s relationship with Russia… No, this would also cause massive damage to Russia, economically and politically.”

Merkel blamed Moscow for illegal actions, using the methods of the 19th and 20th centuries. “The law of the jungle is placed against the strength of the law, unilateral geopolitical concerns against understanding and co-operation,” she said.

With staggering hypocrisy, Merkel is standing reality on its head. It is Germany and the US that are acting as the aggressors, backing and organizing a putsch led by fascist groups in Ukraine, the descendants of political forces Nazi Germany relied upon to commit horrible crimes during World War II. It doing so, it is the Western powers that are reviving the criminal methods of 20th century imperialist politics to secure their geo-strategic aims in Europe. Now Berlin and Washington want to force Moscow to back down on the question of Crimea, which has a Russian-speaking majority and is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Merkel warned that the EU would push ahead with economic sanctions unless Moscow agreed to negotiate “in the next few days.” She said: “None of us wishes that it should come to such actions. But we are all ready for them and will decide on them, if they are unavoidable.”

As the US and NATO build up military forces in the region, Russia responded by holding military exercises involving over 8,000 troops near the Ukrainian border. Belarus, a Russian ally, also requested extra fighter jets and transport aircraft.

In its drive for war, the imperialist powers are relying on the most right-wing forces within Ukraine. Yesterday the Ukrainian parliament approved a proposal from unelected President Oleksandr Turchynov to create a 60,000-strong national guard. It will be formed of interior ministry troops, recruits from military academies and “self-defense” units—i.e., paramilitary troops from the fascist Right Sector or other ultra-right-wing militias that led the February 22 coup against Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych.

 

In a press conference on Wednesday, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Andriy Parubiy, claimed that he has “every reason to believe” that “Ukraine now faces the threat of a full-scale invasion.” He called “upon all the groups that were on the Maidan [to] ensure state security, defend the borders, and eliminate terrorist groups.”

Parubiy also used his press conference to appeal to the United States and Britain to fulfill their obligations as guarantors of Ukraine’s security, evoking the 1994 Budapest Memorandum under which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons stockpile in return for security assurances.

Parubiy was one of the founders of the fascistic Social-National Party of Ukraine, which later transformed itself into the Svoboda party. He played a leading role in the Western-sponsored “Orange Revolution” in 2004. In the lead-up to the 2014 coup, he coordinated the volunteer security corps on the Maidan, made up of war veterans and retired police officers.

Parubiy’s deputy in the new government, Dmytri Yarosh, is the leader of the fascist Right Sector militia and the All-Ukrainian Organization “Tryzub,” whose hero is the World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

On Wednesday, the US news magazine Newsweek carried an interview with Yarosh, who said, “My guys are continuing military training all across Ukraine, ready to cleanse the country of the occupiers.” He added, “We are coordinating our actions with the council of the National Security and Defense, as well as with the army’s General Headquarters. We are currently negotiating to put our forces on a proper legal footing.”

On Thursday, clashes in the industrial city of Donetsk, near the Russian border, broke out between pro-Russian demonstrators and a group allied with the new government, including Right Sector forces. At least one person was killed.

Asked if the new Ukrainian regime would raise the flag of Bandera, Yarosh replied in the affirmative: “We stood under red and black flags throughout the revolution. Red Ukrainian blood spilled on the black Ukrainian earth—that flag is the symbol of the national revolution. I am convinced that this flag will bring us freedom.”

Yarosh indicated he would resort to force if Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine on Sunday: “Right Sector, together with all other Ukrainian citizens, are ready to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity by all possible means.”

The creation of the national guard and the transformation of the fascistic shock troops of the “revolution” into official state institutions has the backing of the imperialist powers. The vote on the national guard came only one day after interim Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk met in Washington with US President Barack Obama, who emphasized his support for the new Ukrainian regime and issued new threats against Moscow.

While the Ukrainian National Guard is aimed at Russia, another key target is the Ukrainian working class. Though it is vastly outgunned by the far larger Russian military, the Ukrainian National Guard is sufficiently large to try to intimidate or possibly crush protests against the reactionary agenda of the right-wing, pro-imperialist regime in Kiev.

During his visit with Obama, Yatsenyuk pledged to enforce IMF demands, eliminate subsidies on natural gas prices, and be “the most unpopular prime minister in the whole history.” The gas subsidies, which keep heating costs relatively affordable for Ukrainian workers, amount to fully 7.5 percent of the economy. Eliminating them would bankrupt large sections of the population.

One indication of the unpopularity of these measures is that Yanukovych backed away from signing an association agreement last autumn with the European Union that included such cuts, fearing that they would trigger protests and the fall of his regime.

14 March, 2014

WSWS.org

 

By Maung Zarni

“What can we do, brother? There are too many. We can’t kill them all.”

He said it matter-of-factly—a former brigadier and diplomat from my native country, Myanmar, about Rohingya Muslims.

We were in the spacious ambassadorial office at Myanmar Embassy in an ASEAN country when this “brotherly” conversation took place. “I am familiar with Myanmar’s racist nationalist narrative. I have also worked with the country’s military intelligence services in pushing for the gradual re-engagement between the West and our country, then an international pariah. Apparently, knowledge of my background made the soldier feel so at ease that he could make such a hateful call in a friendly conversation on official premises in total candor: Islamophobia normalized in the highest ranks of the bureaucracy and military in Myanmar.”

He wanted to make sure I understood he had special knowledge of the situation, stressing that he was stationed for years in Rakhine state, the state that borders Bangladesh and is the Rohingya ancestral homeland. The diplomat then went on to tell me that Bangladeshi even use folk songs to encourage people to migrate to Myanmar, mythically envisioned as the land of plenty, and cross the river that divides the two countries’ porous borders. He recited one particular stanza:

“There, Buddhist women are beautiful.

Staple rice is plentiful. Land is fertile.

Opportunities are ample. Resources are abundant.

Go ye go to Myanmar.”

His point is that these “Bengali,” a racist local reference to the Rohingya, are “invaders” in our predominantly Buddhist country, whose virus-like spread must be repelled by any means necessary. It’s incredibly important to realize that this conversation is in no way an extreme example in Myanmar. It’s not even that shocking that a relatively better-educated graduate of the country’s elite military academy would express such genocidal views. This is where generations of young—and largely Buddhist Burmese—men between the ages of 16 and 21 are conditioned to view themselves as Myanmar’s future ruling elites. Even more troubling is this: my friend’s view is widely held among virtually all Myanmar people from all walks of life—common men on the street, socially influential Buddhist monks, Christian minorities, former dissident leaders (most notably Aung San Suu Kyi), the mainstream intelligentsia, the ruling generals in uniform and ex-generals in silk skirts.

Myanmar’s prevailing popular psyche has been molded by decades of fear of Islam manufactured by the state. Even Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi chillingly spoke about “the global rise of Muslim power” in a BBC interview.

As a group, the Rohingyas’ ancestral home straddles strategically important western Myanmar, neighboring Bangladesh, and the Bay of Bengal, which opens into the Indian Ocean. The Rohingyas’ demographic and ethnic history is not different from the histories of peoples around the world, like Croatians, Serbs or Macedonians, whose ancestral lands have been erased from the political maps of the big powers. Even within Myanmar itself, the ancestral roots of other “borderland” ethnic peoples (such as the Kachin, the Chin and the Karen) are transnational and predate the post-World War II emergence of new modern nation-states.

But uniquely, the Rohingya have been subjected to a government-organized, systematic campaign of mass killing, terror, torture, attempts to prevent births, forced labor, severe restrictions on physical movement, large-scale internal displacement of an estimated 140,000 people, sexual violence, arbitrary arrest, summary execution, land-grabbing and community destruction. Three decades of such policies have produced appalling life conditions for the Rohingya. The doctor-patient ratio is 1:80,000 (the national average is about 1:400), the infant mortality rate is three times the country’s average, and 90 percent of Rohingya are deliberately left illiterate in a country with one of the highest adult literacy rates in all of Asia. Consequently, there have been an unknown number of deaths and large scale exoduses over land and sea to Bangladesh, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Australia and Canada.

The first Myanmar government-organized campaign against the Rohingya was launched as early as 1978, in the guise of an illegal immigration crack-down. Consequently, an estimated 200,000 Rohingya were forced to relocate to newly independent Bangladesh, where they have been equally unwelcome. Even then the Far Eastern Economic Review termed the plight of the Rohingya  “Burma’s Apartheid.” Nearly four decades on, during his visit to Rangoon, South Africa’s Desmond Tutu, a veteran anti-apartheid campaigner in his homeland, used the same word, apartheid, to characterize the Rohingya oppression.

It isn’t even as if the Rohingya were never recognized by the central government as a distinct people. Within a decade of independence from Britain in 1948, the government of the Union of Burma officially recognized the group as “Rohingya,” the group’s collective self-referential historical identity. They were granted full citizenship rights and allowed to take part in numerous acts of citizenship, such as serving in parliament. They were able to broadcast three times a week in their own mother tongue, Rohingya, on Myanmar’s then sole national broadcasting service (Burma Broadcasting Service or BBS) and held positions in the country’s security forces and other ministries. Rohingya were permitted to form their own communal, professional and student associations bearing the name “Rohingya,” and above all, granted a special administrative region for the two large pockets in western Burma made up of 70 percent Rohingya Muslims.

The evidence of Myanmar engaging in a systematic persecution of the Rohingya as a distinct ethnic people supports charges of crimes of genocide against the group. So far, the world’s human rights organizations such as the Human Rights Watch, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Irish Centre for Human Rights have fallen short of calling the 35-years of Myanmar’s genocidal persecution of the Muslim Rohingya a genocide. They have stuck wth “crimes against humanity” and “ethnic cleansing” as their preferred charges against Myanmar government.

This spring, the University of Washington Law School’s academic publication, the Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, however, is scheduled to publish a three-year study of Myanmar’s atrocities against the group. The article, which I co-authored with a colleague from the London-based Equal Rights Trust’s Statelessness and Nationality Project, is entitled “The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya.” Our research has persuaded the journal’s editors and anonymous peer-reviewers that since 1978, successive Myanmar governments and local Buddhists have been committing four out of five acts of genocide spelled out in the United Nations’ Genocide Convention of 1948. Our study finds Myanmar to be guilty of the first four acts, such as “killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”.

Still, misleadingly, international media and foreign governments have characterized the Rohingya persecution as simply “sectarian” or “communal.” Not only does this ignore the instrumental role Myanmar’s successive governments have played in the death and destruction of the Rohingya, but it also overlooks the fact that the Rohingya have no rights or means by which to defend themselves.

The 1.33 million Rohingya Muslims may be “too many to kill,” but that has not stopped the state security forces or the local ultra-nationalist Rakhine from carrying out waves of pogroms against the Rohingya. The state’s racist draconian policies make life so unbearable that the Rohingya would rather risk their lives on voyages across the high seas than wait like sitting ducks to be slaughtered in their ghettos or “open-air prisons,” as the BBC put it.

In my view, despite growing evidence, the international community has avoided calling this “genocide” because none of the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council have the appetite to forego their commercial and strategic interests in Myanmar to address the slow-burning Rohingya genocide. There’s the domestic political factor for those states, too: no world’s leader would want his or her photo taken shaking the blood-stained hands of the Burmese generals and ex-generals with an unfolding genocide in their backyard.  Indeed Myanmar’s genocidal military leaders have re-fashioned themselves ‘Free Market reformists’, opening up the resource-rich country for commercial engagement.  On the persecution of the Rohingya, the outside world has taken at face value Myanmar’s narrative of the Rohingya persecution as simply ‘communal’ or ‘sectarian’ conflicts between them and the local Buddhist Rakhines who make up 2/3 of the local population of Rakhine state. Human Rights Watch proved prophetic when the authors of its 2009 report “Perilous Plight: Burma’s Rohingya Take to the Sea” wrote: “Because they [the Rohingya] have no constituency in the West and come from a strategic backwater, no one wants them [and no one is prepared to help end their decades of persecution] even though the world is well aware of their predicament.”

Maung Zarni is a Burmese scholar in exile. He is an expert on the political affairs of Myanmar, and currently Visiting Fellow at London School of Economics.

13 March, 2014

dissidentblog.org

By Pepe Escobar

In Ukraine, the West supported an unconstitutional putsch against an elected government perpetrated, among others, by fascist/neo-nazi storm troopers (Svoboda, Right Sector) instrumentalized by US intelligence. After a Russian counterpunch, US President Barack Obama proclaimed that any referendum in Crimea would “violate the Ukrainian constitution and violate international law.”

This is just the latest instance in the serial rape of “international law”. The rap sheet is humongous, including; NATO bombing Serbia for 78 days in 1999 to allow Kosovo to secede; the 2003 US invasion and subsequent trillion-dollar occupation and civil war creation in Iraq; NATO/AFRICOM bombing Libya in 2011 invoking

R2P (“responsibility to protect”) as a cover to provoking regime change; US investment in the secession of oil-wealthy South Sudan, so China has to deal with an extra geopolitical headache; and US investment in perennial civil war in Syria.

Yet Moscow still (foolishly?) believes international law should be respected – presenting to the UN Security Council classified information on all Western intel/psy-ops moves leading to the coup in Kiev, including “training” provided by Poland and Lithuania, not to mention Turkish intelligence involvement in setting up a second coup in Crimea. Russian diplomats called for an unbiased international investigation. That will never happen; Washington’s narrative would be completely debunked. Thus a US veto at the UN.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also called for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to objectively investigate those snipers shooting everyone on sight in Kiev, as revealed by Estonia’s foreign minister to EU foreign policy supremo Catherine “I love Yats” Ashton. According to Russia’s ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin, “a completely different picture would be drawn compared to what is being depicted by American media and, unfortunately, by some American and European politicians.” Needless to say, there will be no investigation.

Hi, I’m your good neo-nazi

Everyone remembers the “good Taliban”, with which the US could negotiate in Afghanistan. Then came the “good al-Qaeda”, jihadis the US could support in Syria. Now come the “good neo-nazis”, with which the West can do business in Kiev. Soon there will be “the good jihadis supporting neo-nazis”, who may be deployed to advance US/NATO and anti-Russian designs in Crimea and beyond. After all, Obama mentor Dr Zbigniew “The Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski is the godfather of good jihadis, fully weaponized to fight the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

As facts on the ground go, neo-nazis are definitely back as good guys.

For the first time since the end of World War II, fascists and neo-nazis are at the helm of a European nation (although Ukraine most of all should be characterized as the key swing nation in Eurasia). Few in the West seem to have noticed it.

The cast of characters include Ukrainian interim defense minister and former student at the Pentagon Ihor Tenyukh; deputy prime minister for economic affairs and Svoboda ideologue Oleksandr Sych; agro-oligarch minister of agriculture Ihor Svaika (Monsanto, after all, needs a chief enforcer); National Security Council chief and Maidan commander of Right Sector neo-nazis Andry Parubiy; and deputy National Security Council chief Dmytro Yarosh, the founder Right Sector. Not to mention Svoboda leader Oleh Tyanhybok, a close pal of John McCain and Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland, and active proponent of an Ukraine free from the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia.”

As the Kremlin refuses to deal with this bunch and the upcoming March 16 referendum in Crimea is practically a done deal, Team “Yats” is fully legitimized, with honors, by Team Obama, leader included, in Washington. To quote Lenin, what is to be done? A close reading of President Putin’s moves would suggest an answer: nothing. As in just waiting, while outsourcing the immediate future of a spectacularly bankrupt Ukraine to the EU. The EU is impotent to rescue even the Club Med countries. Inevitably, sooner or later, threat of sanctions or not, it will come crawling back to Moscow seeking “concessions”, so Russia may also foot the bill.

Meanwhile, in Pipelineistan …

Meanwhile, the New Great (Threat) Game in Eurasia advances unabated. Moscow would willingly compromise on a neutral Ukraine – even with neo-nazis in power in Kiev. But an Ukraine attached to NATO is an absolute red line. By the way, NATO is “monitoring” Ukraine with AWACS deployed in Polish and Romanian airspace.

So as the much lauded “reset” between the Kremlin and the Obama administration is for all practical purposes six feet under (with no Hollywood-style second coming in the cards), what’s left is the dangerous threat game. Deployed not only by the Empire, but also by the minions.

That monster collection of Magritte-style faceless bureaucrats at the European Commission (EU), following on the non-stop threat of EU sanctions, has decided to delay a decision on whether Gazprom may sell more gas through the OPAL pipeline in Germany, and also delay negotiations on the legal status of South Stream, the pipeline under the Black Sea which should become operational in 2015.

As if the EU had any feasible Plan B to escape its dependency on Russian gas (not to mention eschew the very profitable financial game played between key European capitals and Moscow). What are they do, import gas on Qatar Airways flights? Buy LNG from the US – something that will not be feasible in years to come? The fact is the minute a gas war is on, if it ever comes down to it, the EU will be under immense pressure by a host of member-nations to keep (and even extend) its Russian gas fix – with or without “our (neo-nazi) bastards” in power in Kiev. Brussels knows it. And most of all, Vlad the Hammer knows it.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War

12 March, 2014

By Dan Lieberman

U.S. foreign policy from Vietnam to Afghanistan has mostly been counter-productive – enabling the happening of what policies were intended to prevent. The disturbing manner in which the crisis in Ukraine is unfolding — more and more provocative — demonstrates once again that U.S. policy is doomed to be counter-productive.

Because healthy thought opposes senseless speculation, analyzing the statements of the “movers” and “shakers” of the United States provides awareness to the U.S. agenda on the situation in Ukraine. If comments by U.S. government officials and media actors represent the thoughts that are guiding U.S. policy toward Ukraine, then its time to ask: “Who is in charge of this madhouse?”

Arizona Senator John McCain claimed that “Russia wants to re-establish the Russian Empire,” which evidently means bringing back the Tsar. Crimea’s entrance to the warmer waters of the Black Sea is important to Russia, but its territory is less to a Russian Empire then Gibraltar is to the British Empire or Puerto Rico is to the American Empire. The Russian speaking and Russian looking Crimea, which has a Russian majority, was part of Russia from 1792 until Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in 1952, transferred the peninsula from the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, leaving the land hanging like an awkward appendage to Ukraine. If the Arizona senator insinuated that Russia is taking advantage of a crisis to regain territory, he may have focused on a real situation and gained support. Instead he turned thoughts toward a ridiculous assertion and diverted attention from the actual happening.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s response to the situation included “You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests. This is an act of aggression that is completely trumped up in terms of its pretext.”

The Secretary should then answer why he voted to invade Iraq on the phony pretext that Saddam Hussein was on the way to develop an atomic bomb? Russia may be (???) re-seizing territory, but the U.S. destroyed territory, caused deaths to hundreds of thousands and displaced millions of Iraqis. Not a single person has been killed, wounded or displaced by the Russian incursion.

Russia’s military moves in Crimea may be hostile, (although a 1997 treaty between Russia and Ukraine allows up to 25,000 Russia troops in Crimea ), but once the Ukrainian government expressed a hostile attitude toward Russia, and western nations seemed to approve the stance, could Russia be expected to act differently? The usual suspects forced the Russians to either whimper or send troops to Crimea.

Look at it another way. Moscow did not challenge the status of Crimea until a government unfriendly to Russia took power in Ukraine. Because the former followed the latter, it shows that, if Russia has any intent to annex Crimea, the move will result from Putin’s conviction that trouble is coming to Russia’s doorstep. Political analysis precedes political action, but western nations acted before thinking and engineered fear to the Bear, rather than making sure the new government did not upset Moscow.

Crimea is important for its Black Sea location, for who owns the seaport of Sevastopol and who must rent it. Resolving the dilemma affects Russia and Ukraine, but has no affect on the rest of a world that can live with either ownership. So, why are the United States and the European Community involved in the dispute? Would it not be preferable for Washington to concentrate on finally preventing cocaine from entering its nation from Mexico, and for all to resolve the tyranny in Bahrain, the anarchy in Egypt and the problems NATO created for Libya (which might portend what awaits Ukraine) – settle existing disputes before engaging in a new argument.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reacted to the question of “why was Russia’s incursion into Crimea not similar to the NATO war on Yugoslavia?”

CNN reporter Fareed Zakaria asked her:

Madeleine, one of the things Russians often say is that the West set the precedent by detaching Kosovo from Serbia, that, at the end of the day, when U.S. secretary of state, you decided that you were going to allow the Kosovars, who wanted to be free and live in an independent state, to go their own way, and we provided military support. Can they not say that what they’re doing in Crimea is simply the same?

Madeleine, who became infamous by responding to a question on CBS’ 60 Minutes’ program as to whether “the killing of 500,000 children during the Iraq war was worth the price of the war, “with the remark “We think the price was worth it,” showed again that she was not all bright. Mme. Albright answered Zakaria’s question by saying:

Absolutely not. I mean, it’s a completely different situation. Yugoslavia fell apart as a result of the actions of Milosevic. It had been going on for a number of years with Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina. And there is no question that that is something that came internally.

And she was correct; the two situations are entirely different.

The Kosovo war resulted in not only the detachment of Kosovo from Yugoslavia but the destruction of Serbia, deaths of many of its people and anarchy and suffering to the entire area. The Serbs in Kosovo ultimately suffered the fate that NATO pretended to prevent to the Kosovars.

The Russian incursion into Crimea has caused no injuries, damage or anarchy, nor does it seem any of that will occur.

Former Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981, resurrected Munich appeasement in a Washington Post Opted on March 3.

His [Putin] initial success may tempt him to repeat that performance more directly in the far eastern provinces of Ukraine proper. If successful, the conclusive third phase could then be directed, through a combination of political unrest and increasingly overt use of Russian forces, to overthrow the government in Kiev. The result would thus be similar to the two phases of Hitler’s seizure of the Sudetenland after Munich in 1938 and the final occupation of Prague and Czechoslovakia in early 1939.

One obvious misrepresentation – Hitler acted with an already prepared scenario for seizing Czechoslovakia. Putin re-acted, and Big Nev has concocted a scenario, which, except for the final occupation, is strangely similar to U.S. attacks on its Latin American neighbors – Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Dominica, Dominican Republic, and many more. Remember The Maine.

CNN’s Christine Amanpour related her usual Hollywood style scenario to Wolf Blitzer, the host of The Situation Room. Paraphrasing, the journalist who knows how to cater to the popular view said, “We fought World War II with great loss of American lives to bring democracy to the European countries. We cannot fail those who fought before.” [Ed: Not an exact quote]

Did not the U.S. enter the war after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and not with any pre-conceived design?

Were not most of the European nations already democracies?

Did the U.S. fight Germany and Italy only to make them into democracies?

Was not the U.S. allied with Russia during World War II?

If 100% and not 20% of the German army was available to repulse the Anglo-American attacks and that army did not have 80% of its forces defending against the Russian attacks, would the allies been able to win World War II, or more likely, would Great Britain have eventually capitulated?

Did not the Soviet Union’s offensive save the western world?

Evidently Ms. Amanpour believes Hollywood accurately describes events. President Obama claims the U.S. is on the side of history. Christine Amanpour is on the side of ancient history. What do the events in Ukraine have to do with World War II?

If preserving democracy is the driving force to assist Ukraine, then why does not Ms. Amanpour argue against the obvious non-democratic manner by which the Ukraine Parliament deposed President Viktor Yanukovych?

The present presidential site of the Ukrainian nation explains the disposition of Yanukovych by the following legal act: Resolution of the Verkhovna Rada No.764-VII of 23.02.2014 “On conferring powers of the President of Ukraine on the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada according to article 112 of the Constitution of Ukraine”

Given that President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych withdrew from performing the constitutional powers The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine hereby resolves:

1. To confer the powers of the President of Ukraine on Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Turchynov Oleksandr Valentynovych according to article 112 of the Constitution of Ukraine.

2. The given Resolution shall enter into force upon its adoption.

Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada OTURCHYNOV

Two questions:

(1) Did President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych withdraw from performing the constitutional powers?

(2) Why is this Article 112 different than Article 112 in the Ukraine constitution?

Article 112 of the Ukraine constitution states: In the event of an early termination of the authority of the President of Ukraine in accordance with Articles 108, 109, 110 and 111 of this Constitution, the discharge of the duties of the President of Ukraine, for the period pending the elections and the assumption of the office by the next President of Ukraine, shall be vested on the Prime Minister of Ukraine.

Articles 108, 109, 110 and 111 of the Ukrainian Constitution refer to an elaborate impeachment process, which was not followed, and says that “The President of Ukraine may be removed from office by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine by the procedure of impeachment, in the event that he or she commits state treason or other crime.”

The reasons for impeachment must first be proven before a vote on impeachment can occur. Did this happen?

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on the program Meet the Press, recited his usual bland comments, peppered with patriotic slogans for his constituents.

They (Russia) are an enemy of that and certainly an enemy of the United States. And regards to those things I outlined, if you look at the positions they’ve taken on issue after issue, Russia has been an obstacle to U.S. national interests.

Kudos for Vladimir Putin. Aren’t leaders elected to protect their nation’s interests and not the interests of others? For much of the world, Senator Rubio’s declaration may be the best compliment given to a world leader – willing to combat U.S. interferences. And also a smart maneuver – if past history is a clue then the probability of a U.S. foreign policy resulting in success is less than the chances of the New York Knicks winning the NBA championship. Wise not to follow a loser.

However, is the Florida Senator’s statement true? Has Russia been an obstacle to U.S. national interests?

Putin’s Russia endorsed the Security Council resolution on Libya and has not criticized or interfered with U.S. engagement in Afghanistan. Criticism and lack of support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq coincided with France’s and Germany’s attitudes at that time. No actions were taken to halt the invasion. The only two prominent disagreements have been with U.S. policies toward Iran (which is changing) and Syria – not different than the attitudes of many other nations.

However, these are foreign policies and not national interests. The U.S. has no economic or other major interests in Iran and Syria, except for those it conceives. Russia has definite economic and other interest in Iran and Syria. So, has not the U.S. been an obstacle to Russian national interests?

Senator Marco Rubio has shown why he should never be considered a presidential candidate.

Russia should remove its troops from the Crimea, but events may not permit this to happen. If a government, which is unfriendly to Russia, remains in power in Kiev, it is more likely the Crimeans will vote to rejoin Russia. For that event, Kiev, United States and the European Union can blame themselves. Careless assemblage of facts, inadequate analysis and bewildering actions characterize their responses to the events in Ukraine. Frenetic, paranoid, chaotic and illogical policies derive from those who do not have stable thought, and that is not an exaggeration — the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and engagements in Somalia, Nicaragua, Panama, Guatemala, Libya and other places confirm the thesis.

Dan Lieberman is DC based editor of Alternative Insight, a commentary on foreign policy and politics.

11 March, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

By Prof. James Petras

The Obama regime, in coordination with its allies and proxies, has re-launched a virulent world-wide campaign to destroy independent governments, encircle and ultimately, undermine global competitors, and establish a new US – EU centered world order.

We will proceed by identifying the recent ‘cycles’ of US empire-building; the advances and retreats; the methods and strategies; the results and perspectives. Our main focus is on the imperial dynamics driving the US toward greater military confrontations, up to and including conditions which can lead to a world war.

Recent Imperial Cycles

US empire-building has not been a linear process. The recent decades provide ample evidence of contradictory experiences. Summarily we can identify several phases in which empire-building has experienced broad advances and sharp setbacks – with certain caveats. We are looking at global processes, in which there are also limited counter-tendencies: In the midst of large-scale imperial advances, particular regions, countries or movements successfully resisted or even reversed the imperial thrust. Secondly, the cyclical nature of empire-building in no way puts in doubt the imperial character of the state and economy and its relentless drive to dominate, exploit and accumulate. Thirdly, the methods and strategy directing each imperial advance differ according to changes among targeted countries.

Over the past thirty years we can identify three phases in empire-building.

Imperial Advance 1980’s to 2000

In the period roughly from the mid-1980’s to the year 2000, empire-building expanded on a global scale.

(A). Imperial Expansion in the former Communist regions

The US and EU penetrated and hegemonized Eastern Europe; disintegrated and pillaged Russia and the USSR; privatized and denationalized hundreds of billions of dollars worth of public enterprises, mass media outlets and banks; incorporated military bases throughout Eastern Europe into NATO and established satellite regimes as willing accomplices in imperial conquests in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

(B). Imperial Expansion in Latin America

Beginning from the early 1980’s to the end of the century, empire-building advanced throughout Latin America under the formula of “free markets and free elections”.

From Mexico to Argentina, empire-centered, neo-liberal regimes privatized and denationalized over 5,000 public enterprises and banks, benefiting US and European multi-nationals. Political leaders lined up with the US in international forums. Latin American generals responded favorably to US-centered military operations. Bankers extracted billions in debt payments and laundered many billions more in illicit money. The US-centered, continent-wide “North American Free Trade Agreement” appeared to advance according to schedule.

 

(C).Imperial Advances in Asia and Africa

Communist and nationalist regimes shed their leftist and anti-imperialist policies and opened their societies and economies to capitalist penetration. In Africa, two key “leftist” countries, Angola and post-apartheid South Africa adopted “free market policies”.

In Asia, China and Indo-China moved decisively toward capitalist development strategies; foreign investment, privatizations and intense exploitation of labor replaced collectivist egalitarianism and anti-imperialism. India, and other state-directed capitalist countries, like South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, liberalized their economies. Imperial advances were accompanied by greater economic volatility, a sharpening of the class struggle and an opening of the electoral process to accommodate competing capitalist factions.

Empire-building expanded under the slogan of “free markets and fair elections” – markets dominated by giant multi-nationals and elections, which assured elite successes.

Imperial Retreat and Reverses: 2000-2008

The brutal costs of the advance of empire led to a global counter-tendency, a wave of anti-neoliberal uprisings and military resistance to US invasions. Between 2000 – 2008 empire-building was under siege and in retreat.

Russia and China Challenge the Empire

US empire-building ceased to expand and conquer in two strategic regions: Russia and Asia. Under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin, the Russian state was reconstructed; pillage and disintegration was reversed. The economy was harnessed to domestic development. The military was integrated into a system of national defense and security. Russia once again became a major player in regional and international politics.

China’s turn toward capitalism was accompanied by a dynamic state presence and a direct role in promoting double digit growth for two decades: China becoming the second largest economy in the world, displacing the US as the major trading partner in Asia and Latin America. The US economic empire was in retreat.

Latin America: The End of the Neo-Liberal Empire

Neo-liberalism and US-centered ‘integration’ led to pillage, economic crises and major popular upheavals, leading to the ascendancy of new center-left and left regimes. ‘Post neo-liberal’ administrations emerged in Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Central America and Uruguay. US empire-builders suffered several strategic defeats.

The US effort to secure a continent-wide free trade agreement fell apart and was replaced by regional integration organizations that excluded the US and Canada. In its place, Washington signed bi-lateral agreements with Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Panama and Peru.

Latin America diversified its markets in Asia and Europe: China replaced the US as its main trading partner. Extractive development strategies and high commodity prices financed greater social spending and political independence.

Selective nationalizations, increased state regulation and debt renegotiations weakened US leverage over the Latin American economies. Venezuela, under President Hugo Chavez successfully challenged US hegemony in the Caribbean via regional organizations. Caribbean economies achieved greater independence and economic viability through membership in PETROCARIBE, a program through which they received petrol from Venezuela at subsidized prices. Central American and Andean countries increased security and trade via the regional organization, ALBA. Venezuela provided an alternative development model to the US-centered neo-liberal approach, in which earnings from the extractive economy financed large-scale social programs.

From the end of the Clinton Administration to the end of the Bush Administration, the economic empire was in retreat. The empire lost Asian and Latin American markets to China. Latin America gained greater political independence. The Middle East became ‘contested terrain’. A revised and stronger Russian state opposed further encroachments on its borders. Military resistance and defeats in Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and Lebanon challenged US dominance.

Imperial Offensive: Obama’s Advances the Empire

The entire period of the Obama regime has been taken up with reversing the retreat of empire-building. To that end Obama has developed a primarily military strategy (1) confrontation and encircling China and Russia, (2) undermining and overthrowing independent governments in Latin America and re-imposing neo-liberal client regimes, and (3) launching covert and overt military assaults on independent regimes everywhere.

The empire-building offensive of the 21st century differs from that of the previous decade in several crucial ways: Neo-liberal economic doctrines are discredited and electorates are not so easily convinced of the beneficence of falling under US hegemony. In other words, empire-builders cannot rely on diplomacy, elections and free market propaganda to expand their imperial reach as they did in the 1990’s.

To reverse the retreat and advance 21st century empire-building, Washington realized it had to rely on force and violence. The Obama regime allocated billions of dollars to finance arms for mercenaries, salaries for street fighters and campaign expenses for electoral clients engaged in destabilization campaigns. Diplomatic duplicity and broken agreements replaced negotiated settlements – on a grand scale.

Throughout the Obama period not a single imperial advance was secured via elections, diplomatic agreements or political negotiations. The Obama Presidency sought and secured the massification of global spy network (NSA) and the almost daily murder of political adversaries via drones and other means. Covert killer operations under the US Special Forces expanded throughout the world. Obama assumed dictatorial prerogatives, including the power to order the arbitrary assassination of U.S. citizens.

The unfolding of the Obama regime’s global effort to stem the imperial retreat and re-launch empire-building “pivoted” almost exclusively on military instruments: armed proxies, aerial assaults, coups and violent putschist power grabs. Thugs, mobs, Islamist terrorists, Zionist militarists and a medley of retrograde separatist assassins were the tools of imperial advance. The choice of imperial proxies varied according to time and political circumstances.

Confronting and Degrading China: Military Encirclement and Economic Exclusion

Faced with the loss of markets and the challenges of China as a global competitor, Washington developed two major lines of attack: 1. An economic strategy designed to deepen the integration of Asian and Latin America countries in a free trade pact that excludes China (the Trans Pacific Trade Agreement); and 2. Pentagon-designed military plan Air-Sea Battle , which targets China’s mainland with a full-scale air and missile assault if Washington’s current strategy of controlling China’s commercial maritime lifeline fails (FT, 2/10/14). While an offensive military strategy is still on the Pentagon’s drawing board, the Obama regime is building up its maritime armada a few short miles off China’s coast , expanding its military bases in the Philippines, Australia and Japan and tightening the noose around China’s strategic maritime routes for vital imports like oil, gas and raw materials.

The US is actively promoting an Indo-Japanese military alliance as part of its strategy of military encirclement of China. Joint military maneuvers, high-level military coordination and meetings between Japanese and Indian military officials are seen by the Pentagon as strategic advances in isolating China and reinforcing the US stranglehold on China’s maritime routes to the Middle East, Southeast Asia and beyond. India, according to one of India’s leading weeklies, is viewed “as a junior partner of the US. The Indian Navy is fast becoming the chief policeman of the Indian Ocean and the Indian military’s dependence on the U.S. military-industrial complex is increasing…” (Economic and Political Weekly (Mumbai), 2/15/14, p. 9. The US is also escalating its support for violent separatist movements in China, namely the Tibetans, Uighurs and other Islamists. Obama’s meeting with the Dali Lama was emblematic of Washington’s efforts to foment internal unrest.

The gross political intervention of outgoing U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke in domestic Chinese politics is an indication that diplomacy is not the Obama regime’s prime policy instrument when it comes to dealing with China. Ambassador Locke openly met with Uighur and Tibetan separatists and publicly disparaged China’s economic success and political system while openly encouraging opposition politics (FT, 2/28/14, p. 2).

The Obama regime’s attempt to advance empire in Asia via military confrontation and trade pacts, which exclude China, has led China to build-up its military capacity to avoid maritime strangulation. China answers the US trade threat by advancing its productive capacity, diversifying its trade relations, increasing its ties with Russia and deepening its domestic market.

To date, the Obama regime’s reckless militarization of the Pacific has not led to an open break in relations with China, but the military road to advancing empire at China’s expense threatens a global economic catastrophe or worse, a world war.

Imperial Advance: Isolating, Encircling and Degrading Russia

With the advent of President Vladimir Putin and the reconstitution of the Russian state and economy, the U.S. lost a vassal client and source of plundered wealth. Washington’s empire-builders continued to seek Russian ‘cooperation and collaboration’ in undermining independent states, isolating China and pursuing its colonial wars. The Russian state, under Putin and Medvedev, had sought to accommodate U.S. empire builders via negotiated agreements, which would enhance Russia’s position in Europe, recognize Russian strategic borders and acknowledge Russian security concerns. However, Russian diplomacy secured few and transitory gains while the US and EU made major gains with Russian complicity and passivity.

The un-stated agenda of Washington, especially with Obama’s drive to re-launch a new wave of imperial conquests, was to undermine Russia’s re-emergence as a major player in world politics. The strategic idea was to isolate Russia, weaken its growing international presence and return it to the vassal status of the Yeltsin period, if possible.

From the US – EU takeover of Eastern Europe , the Balkans and Baltic states, and their transformation into NATO military bases and capitalist vassal states in the early 1990’s, to the penetration and pillage of Russia during the Yeltsin years, the prime purpose of Western policy has been to establish a unipolar empire under US domination.

The EU and the US proceeded to dismember Yugoslavia into subservient mini-states. They then bombed Serbia in order to carve off Kosovo, destroying one of the few independent countries still allied with Russia. The U.S. then moved on to foment uprisings in Georgia, Ukraine and Chechnya. They bombed, invaded and later occupied Iraq – a former Russian ally in the Gulf region.

The driving strategy of US policy was to encircle and reduce Russia to the status of a weak, marginal power, and to undermine Vladimir Putin’s efforts to restore Russia’s position as a regional power. In 2008 Washington’s puppet regime in Georgia, tested the mettle of the Russian state by launching an assault on South Ossetia, killing at least 10 Russian peacekeepers and wounding hundreds (not to mention thousands of civilians). Then-Russian President Medvedev responded by sending the Russian armed forces to repel Georgian troops and support the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

U.S. diplomatic agreements with Russia had been asymmetrical – Russia was to acquiesce in Western expansion in exchange for ‘political acceptance’. Duplicity trumped open-diplomacy. Despite agreements to the contrary, U.S. bases and missile installations were established throughout Eastern Europe, pointing at Russia, under the pretext that they were “really targeting Iran”. Even as Russia protested that post-Cold War agreements were breached, the Empire ignored Moscow’s complaints and encirclement advanced.

In a further diplomatic disaster, Russia and China signed off on a U.S.-authored United Nations Security Council agreement to allow NATO to engage in “humanitarian overflights” in Libya. NATO immediately took this as the ‘green light’ for attack and converted ‘humanitarian intervention’ into a devastating aerial bombing campaign that led to the overthrow of Libya’s legitimate government and the destruction of Libya as viable, independent North African state. By signing the ‘humanitarian’ UN agreement, Russia and China lost a friendly government and trading partner in Africa! Even earlier, the Russians had agreed to allow the US to transport weapons and troops through Russian Federation territory to support the US invasion of Afghanistan … with no reciprocal gain (except perhaps an even greater flood of Afghan heroin).

Russian diplomats agreed to US (Zionist)-authored UN economic sanctions against Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons program … undermining a political ally and lucrative market. Moscow believed that by backing US sanctions on Iran and granting transport routes to Afghanistan in late 2001 they would receive some ‘security guarantees’ from the Americans regarding the separatist movements in the Caucuses. The U.S. ‘reciprocated’ by further backing Chechen separatist leaders exiled in the US despite the on-going terror campaigns against Russian civilians – up to and even after the Chechen slaughter of hundreds of school children and teachers in Beslan in 2004….

With the US under Obama advancing its encirclement of Russia in Eurasia and its isolation in North Africa and the Middle East, Putin finally decided to draw a line by backing Russia’s only remaining ally in the Middle East, Syria. Putin sought to secure a negotiated end to the Western-Gulf Monarchist-backed mercenary invasion of Damascus. To little avail: The US and EU increased arms shipments, military trainers and financing to the 30,000 Islamist mercenaries based in Jordan as they engaged in cross-border attacks to overthrow the Syrian government.

Washington and Brussels continued their imperial push toward the Russian heartland by organizing and financing a violent seizure of power (putsch) in western Ukraine. The Obama regime financed a coalition of armed neo-Nazi street fighters and neo-liberal politicos, to the tune of $5 billion dollars, to overthrow the elected regime. The putschists then moved to end Crimean autonomy and break long-standing military treaty agreements with Russia. Under enormous pressure from the autonomous Crimean government and the vast majority of the population and facing the critical loss of its naval and military facilities on the Black Sea, Putin, finally, forcefully moved Russian troops into a defensive mode in Crimea.

The Obama regime launched a series of aggressive moves against Russia to isolate it and to buttress it faltering puppet regime in Kiev: economic sanctions and expulsions were the order of the day … Obama’s seizure of the Ukraine signaled the start of a ‘new Cold War’. The seizure of the Ukraine was part of Obama’s grand ongoing strategy of advancing empire.

The Ukraine power grab signaled the biggest geo-political challenge to the continued existence of the Russian state. Obama seeks to extend and deepen the imperial sweep across Europe to the Caucuses: the violent regime coup and subsequent defense of the puppet regime in Kiev are key elements in undermining a key adversary– Russia.

After pretending to ‘partner’ with Russia, while slicing off Russian allies in the Balkans and Mid-East over the previous decades, Obama made his most audacious and reckless move. Casting off all pretexts of peaceful co-existence and mutual accommodation, the Obama regime broke a power-sharing agreement with Russia over Ukrainian governance and backed the neo-Nazi putsch.

The Obama regime assumed that having secured Russia’s earlier acquiescence in the face of advancing US imperial power in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and the Gulf region, Washington’s empire-builders made the fateful decision to test Russia in its most strategic geopolitical region, one directly affecting the Russian people and its most strategic military assets. Russia reacted in the only language understood in Washington and Brussels: with a major military mobilization. Obama’s advance of ‘empire-building via salami tactics’ and duplicitous diplomacy was nearing an end.

Advancing Empire in the Middle East and Latin America

The imperial advance of the 1990’s came to an end by the middle of the first decade of the new millennium. Defeats in Afghanistan, withdrawal from Iraq, the demise of puppet regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, election losses in the Ukraine and the defeat and demise of pro-U.S. neo-liberal regimes in Latin America were exacerbated by a deepening economic crisis in the imperial centers of Europe and Wall Street.

Obama had few economic and political options to advance the empire. Yet his regime was determined to end the retreat and advance the empire; he resorted to tactics and strategies more akin to 19th century colonial and 20th century totalitarian regimes.

The methods were violent- militarism was the policy pivot. But at a time of domestic imperial exhaustion, new military tactics replaced large-scale ground force invasions. Proxy-armed mercenaries took center stage in overthrowing regimes targeted by the US. Political and ideological affinities were subsumed under the generic euphemism of “rebels”. The mass media alternated between pressuring for greater military escalation and endorsing the existing level of imperial warfare. The entire political spectrum in Europe and the US shifted rightward – even as the majority of the electorate rejected new military engagements, especially ground wars.

Obama escalated troops in Afghanistan, launched an air war that overthrew President Gadhafi and turned the Libya into a broken, failed state. Proxy wars became the new strategy to advance imperial empire-building. Syria was targeted – tens of thousands of Islamist extremists were recruited and funded by imperial regimes and despotic Gulf monarchies. Millions of refugees fled, tens of thousands were killed

In Latin America, Obama backed the military coup in Honduras overthrowing the elected Liberal government of President Manuel Zelaya, he recognized a congressional coup ousting the elected center-left government in Paraguay while refusing to recognize the election victory of President Maduro in Venezuela. In the face of Maduro’s win in Venezuela, Washington backed several months of mob street violence in an attempt to destabilize the country.

In the Ukraine, Egypt, Venezuela and Thailand, ‘the street’ replaced elections. Obama’s strategic imperial goals have focused on the re-conquest and pillage of Russia and its return to the vassal status of the Boris Yeltsin years, Latin America’s return to the neo-liberal regimes of 1990’s and China to the submissiveness of the 1980’s. The imperial strategy has been ‘to conquer from within’ setting the stage for domination from the outside.

Advancing Empire: Israel and the Middle East Detour

One of the great historical paradoxes of the U.S. imperial retreat of the 21st century has been the role played by influence of Israel and its Zionist Fifth Column embedded within the U.S. political power structure. Washington’s wars and sanctions in the Middle East have been largely at the behest of influential ‘Israel Firsters’ in the White House, Pentagon, Treasury and National Security Council and Congress.

It was largely because the US was engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that Washington “neglected” China’s growing economic prowess. By concentrating on ‘wars for Israel’ in the Middle East, the U.S. has not been in a position to challenge the rise of nationalism and populism in Latin America. Protracted ‘wars for Israel’ have exhausted the US economy and the American public’s enthusiasm for new ground wars elsewhere.

Zionist ideologues, dubbed “neo-conservatives”, were instrumental in shaping the global militarist approach to empire-building and marginalizing the market-driven empire building, favored by the multi-nationals and giant extractive industry.

Obama’s attempt to halt the retreat of empire caused by Zionist militarism has not borne fruit: His effort to co-opt Zionists and pressure Israel to stop fomenting new wars in the Middle East is a failure. His ‘pivot to Asia’ has turned into a strategy of brute military encirclement of China. His overtures to Iran have been stymied by the Zionist power bloc in Congress and the imposition of Israeli-dictated terms of negotiations. The entire “advance of the empire-building project”, which was to define the Obama legacy, has been weakened by the enormous cost of heeding the advice and directives of the Israel-loyalists within his Administration. Israel, one of the most brutal colonial powers, has paradoxically and unintentionally played a major role in undermining Obama’s efforts to reverse the decline of empire and advance the U.S. diplomatic and economic dimensions of empire-building

Results and Perspectives: Advancing Empire in the Post Neo-Liberal Period

Obama’s reckless effort to advance empire in the second decade of the 21st century is far more dangerous than his predecessors in the late 20th century. Russia has recovered. It is not the disintegrating state that Bush and Clinton dismembered and pillaged. China is no longer a rising market economy so eager to trade with the US while overlooking American incursions into Chinese territorial waters. Today China is a major economic power, wielding economic leverage in the form of $3 Trillion in U.S. Treasury notes. China no longer tolerates U.S. interference in its domestic politics- it is willing to crack down on U.S.-backed ethnic separatists and terrorists.

Latin America, including Venezuela, have developed autonomous regional organizations, diversified their markets to Asia and established a powerful post-neoliberal consensus. Venezuela has turned its military, once the favorite instrument of US-engineered coups, into a bulwark of the existing democratic order.

The electoral road to US empire-building has been closed or requires tight imperial “supervision” to secure “favorable outcomes”. Washington’s new policy of choice is violence: enlisting mob action, mercenary extremists, Islamists and Uighur terrorists, neo-Nazis and the riff raff of the world in its service.

The balance sheet of six years of “advancing empire” under Obama is in doubt. The violent overthrow of President Gadhafi did not lead to a stable client regime: the utter destruction and chaos in Libya has undercut the imperial presence. Syria is under attack but by anti-Western Islamist fanatics. The defeat of Assad will not ‘advance empire’ as much as it will expand radical Islamist (including Al Qaeda) power.

The Ukraine puppet regime of neo-liberals and neo-Nazis is literally bankrupt, riven with internal conflicts and facing profound regional divisions. Russia is threatened, but their leaders have taken decisive military action to defend their Crimean allies and strategic military bases.

Obama has provoked and threatened adversaries but has not secured much in terms of valuable allies or clients. His effort to replicate the imperial advances of the 1990’s has failed because the relationships of power between Europe and Russia, Japan and China, and Venezuela and Colombia have changed. Proxies, predator drones and the US Special Forces are not able to reverse the retreat. The economic crisis has cut too deep; the domestic exhaustion with empire is too pervasive. The cost of sustaining Israel is too high. Advancing empire in these circumstances is a dangerous game: it risks a larger nuclear war to overcome adversity and retreat.

James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals.

11 March, 2014

James Petras Blog

 

By Johannes Stern

In the lead-up to the referendum on the status of Crimea scheduled for March 16, Washington and its European allies are stepping up diplomatic and military pressure on Russia.

On Monday, US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt declared that the United States would not recognize the results of the “so-called referendum” and threatened further steps against Russia. He said Washington was “not prepared to recognize any result of the referendum,” as it regards Crimea “as an integral part of Ukraine.” He accused Russia of trying to change the status of Crimea “under the barrel of a gun.”

Pyatt said President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry had held talks with European leaders over the weekend, and that the US and the European Union were in complete agreement that harsher sanctions could follow the referendum. “There is no daylight between us,” he said.

Falling into line behind Washington, European leaders released their own bellicose statements. Steffen Seibert, the press secretary of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said that, “the chancellor asserted the German position forcefully” in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday, calling “the so-called March 16 referendum on Crimea illegal.”

Seibert claimed, “[T]he Russian side has not shown readiness” to establish a so called “contact group” to negotiate a Russian stand-down in Crimea. Seibert warned Moscow “to change this position in the near future,” adding that, “The time for a conversation and rapprochement is short.”

Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron, who met for dinner Sunday night, threatened Russia with “further consequences” if Moscow seized on the poll to justify an attempt by Crimea to separate itself from Ukraine. Both reiterated that the referendum was “illegal.”

The aggressive stance against Russia is supported by both conservative and social democratic politicians in Europe. British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband called on Cameron to exert “maximum pressure” on Russia, while German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) threatened fresh sanctions over the weekend.

Addressing the House of Commons on Monday, Cameron warned that Russia could face targeted sanctions “within days.”

US and European officials pressed ahead despite phone calls late Sunday from Chinese President Xi Jinping to Obama and to Merkel, calling on the US and EU to scale back tensions. “The situation in Ukraine is extremely complex, and what is most urgent is for all sides to remain calm and exercise restraint to avoid an escalation in tensions,” Xi reportedly told Obama. “Political and diplomatic routes must be used to resolve the crisis,” he added. He went on to suggest that China could serve as a diplomatic channel to facilitate diplomacy.

Xi reportedly stressed with Merkel that the situation was “highly sensitive” and that China favored finding a political solution to the crisis.

The Chinese intervention evidently had no effect. On Monday, the EU confirmed that “preparatory work” on fresh sanctions had “started.” Officials from the EU and the US are reportedly to meet in London today to discuss another round of sanctions that could be formally adopted at an EU foreign ministers summit on March 17—that is, the day after the Crimean referendum.

The sanctions, including travel bans on Russian officials and the freezing of their assets, would mark the second stage in the EU’s three-step plan. In a first step, the EU last week agreed to suspend visa talks and negotiations on a new investment agreement with Russia. The third stage would involve an arms embargo and harsh trade sanctions.

Even without a formal decision on trade sanctions, the EU is taking initial steps to mount a blockade of Russian energy supplies to Europe. The European Commission decided Monday to prevent Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom from delivering more gas to central Europe by circumventing Ukraine. According to the Financial Times, EU officials “acknowledged privately the move was geopolitical as much as technical.”

These decisions are only the latest in a series of war-mongering provocations by the imperialist powers since Russia sought to secure Crimea, which has a Russian majority and is the home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, in the wake of the Western-backed putsch in Ukraine on February 22.

In order to achieve their geopolitical goals and destroy Russian influence not only in the western part of Ukraine but also in the east and throughout the region, Washington, Berlin and Brussels are prepared to drive Ukraine into civil war and risk a military confrontation with Russia.

NATO announced Monday that it is deploying AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) reconnaissance aircraft to Poland and Romania as “part of the alliance’s efforts to monitor the crisis in Ukraine.”

Germany is playing a growing role in the military build-up. Most of the AWACS planes have their home base in the German town of Geilenkirchen. The deployment comes as US forces boost the number of F-15 fighter jets flying NATO air patrols over the Baltic States.

Today, Steinmeier is set to travel to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for talks on the Crimean crisis.

On Sunday, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen gave an interview to the German Bild newspaper in which he announced plans to improve the efficiency of the Ukrainian army. On Monday, the Ukrainian army began military drills. According to an announcement of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, the government is testing the combat readiness of its troops.

The Ukrainian military drills came only one day after Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk gave a nationalist, war-mongering speech in front of pro-government crowds celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of poet Taras Shevchenko. “Our fathers and grandfathers have spilled their blood for this land,” Yatsenyuk declared. “And we won’t budge a single centimeter from Ukrainian land. Let Russia and its president know this.”

The reactionary character of the new Ukrainian government and the so-called “Maidan movement” was highlighted by the fact that Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky received a friendly welcome on Sunday when he addressed a few thousand protesters.

Khodorkovsky personifies a layer of former Stalinists who, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, used their positions in the bureaucracy to amass incredible fortunes through fraud and theft of the formerly nationalised property. He spent ten years in prison for his crimes before he was released at the end of last year in a deal struck between the Putin regime and Berlin.

Khodorkovsky’s presence on the Maidan underscores that the protest movement had nothing to do with democracy or human rights. The new regime in Kiev relies on Khodorkovsky-type Ukrainian oligarchs, working closely with far-right and fascist groups, to impose massive attacks on the working class and help the imperialist powers to isolate and carve up Russia.

Addressing the Maidan crowd, Khodorkovsky denounced the Putin regime while seeking to whitewash the fascist elements who led the coup against Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych. “Russian propaganda lies, as always,” he said. “There are no fascists or Nazis here, no more than on the streets on Moscow or St. Petersburg. I want you to know that there is a very different Russia. There are people there who, during those days, took to the streets to participate in anti-war rallies in Moscow. They did so despite arrests and many years that they will have to spend in prison.”

Khodorkovsky’s remarks were widely reported in the Western media, as they conform to the official propaganda, which seeks to present the mélange of fascist thugs and multi-billionaire oligarchs as a democratic revolution.

11 March, 2014

WSWS.org

 

 

By S. Chatterjee

The events that are playing out in Venezuela evoke a strange sense of déjà-vu. It brings back memories of the coup of 2002, spearheaded by the Venezuelan opposition parties with far right-wing leader Leopoldo Lopez playing a starring role with the blessings of the United States, which was a brazen attempt to undermine the Bolivarian revolution and to oust Venezuela’s democratically elected leader, the late Hugo Chavez. The current street protests in Venezuela, which began in the university town of San Cristobal as a reaction against the rising incidents of violent crime, have taken on a different hue altogether. The right wing opposition parties, with the encouragement of the US (which has US $5mn in its 2014 budget earmarked to support opposition activities in Venezuela), have blocked traffic on major thoroughfares, attacked government buildings including attempts at arson, engaged in violence ranging from shooting to throwing Molotov cocktails etc. The protesters have rallied around the slogan ‘salida’ which indicates a forceful regime change, not a constitutional removal of Nicolas Maduro, Chavez’s successor and Venezuela’s democratically elected leader. In the propaganda of the opposition, Nicolas Maduro has repeatedly referred to as a dictator when the facts are that he won through fairly conducted elections, and his popularity was reinforced by his stunning victory by a ten point margin in the December municipal elections where the ruling party won 76% of the votes polled.

The roots of discontent in Venezuela can be traced to the massive economic redistribution attempts made by the Chavista government under Chavez which left the upper classes alienated. Though there has been a massive improvement in the living conditions of the poor in Venezuela, poverty has not been eradicated. Since the implementation of the Bolivarian Missions, Venezuela has made progress in social development particularly in areas such as health, education and poverty. In fact, Venezuela is one of the few nations which are expected to meet all the eight goals of the Millennium Development Goals, by the 2015 deadline unlike India. Notwithstanding all of this, there has been a scarcity of staple food items as well as a raging inflation which has disproportionately affected the poor. Venezuela’s dependence on imports for food security as well as speculation is largely responsible for such a condition. The government’s inability to rein in inflation has fanned the flames of discontentment and rebellion. The triggering factor has been a massive increase in violent crime in the country, which has one of the highest rates of homicide in the world, which stands at 39 out of every 1,00,000 persons. While these are very valid causes of concern for any country, it appears that the initial protests have been hijacked by the opposition which aims to create a situation which could lead to calls of external armed intervention in the country, with predictable results. A similar pattern of protests have emerged in Ukraine where a minority has come out on the streets in order to topple a government elected by the majority. Parallels may be drawn with Chile in 1973 where the popular and democratically elected Allende government was ousted by a CIA backed military coup which was preceded by a protracted period of orchestrated civil unrest by right wing and middle class groups supported and financed by the US.

The theatre for political coups has changed over the years. Coups no longer happen secretly behind the public gaze. Coups of the twenty-first century are orchestrated on streets in form of protests leading to disorder and attempts at destablisation. An important distinction needs to be drawn between protests such as those in Egypt which were an expression of majority angst against undemocratic regimes vis-a-vis attempts of minority elements to oust democratically elected officials. The corporate media, by and large, has played an unholy part in the attempt to portray Maduro government’s actions as barbaric and draconian whereas the truth is that of the hundreds initially arrested for creating disorder, less than twenty remain in detention and they have been charged with specific acts of violence. The government of Venezuela has shown extraordinary restraint in dealing with the acts of vandalism of the street mobs.

It is important to mention that the current protests are representative of the prosperous classes taking to the streets in order to defeat the results of the election. The poor have remained loyal to the Chavista government and have even organized rallies in support of it. The present protests are a clear attempt to topple the popular government and replace it with an oligarchy that would place the immense oil resources of the country at the disposal of a privileged minority instead of letting it get used for poverty eradication. It is significant to note that Venezuela has a mixed economy dominated by the petroleum sector, which accounts for roughly a third of GDP, around 80% of exports, and more than half of government revenues. It also has the least expensive petrol in the world because the consumer price of petrol is heavily state-subsidized. Naturally, the opposition has the support of the corporate media, the big corporate houses and the business elite who have a stake in pulling out the rug from beneath Maduro’s feet and reversing Chavez’s war against neo-liberalism which began some fifteen years ago, with massive support from Venezuela’s masses. It is no secret that the left-democratic governments of Latin America have been battling against Western interference and attempts at political subversion which would turn these countries into client states of the West, quite like Mexico and Colombia.

The battle in Venezuela is also being played out on the social media where Twitter and Facebook have emerged as key forums to spread both information and disinformation. The disingenuous nature of the images posted on social media were revealed recently when many of the images purportedly from Venezuela’s protests turned out to be those from Egypt, Greece, Spain and other places. The Venezuelan government has disrupted internet connectivity in various hotbeds of the protests and has even banned certain websites, in an attempt to muzzle dissent, a move which is difficult to condone because tolerance, and even encouragement, of ‘peaceful’ protest is a measure of democracy.

The issue underlying this utterly confusing spectacle of events is whether political decisions are to be taken through the ballot or through muscle-flexing on the streets. It seems patently undemocratic to allow the ballot to be cowed down by the bullet and now is a time for governments around the world to take a stand on whether democracy, by itself, is deserving of respect, or whether democracy is to be given lip-service only when it serves the interests of those demanding it.

 

S. Chatterjee is a New Delhi based lawyer

10 March, 2014

Countercurrents.org