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Obama Urges Ukraine’s Military To Not Get Involved (Two Month Ago)
Obama says the U.S. urges Ukraine’s military not to get involved in a conflict that must be resolved politically. He’s expressing outrage about images of Ukrainian security forces firing automatic guns on Ukrainian people.
Obama says in a statement that Ukraine should respect the right of protest and that protesters must be peaceful. He’s calling for dialogue to reduce tensions and address the people’s grievances.
While that sounds somewhat reasonable, it is not what Obama now says about the current attack by the Ukrainian military on so far rather peaceful protesters in Donetsk oblast. He said the above two month ago while U.S. financed brutes from Maidan occupied government buildings, hailed hundreds of Molotov cocktails on policemen and stormed the parliament to stage their coup.
For a usually slick operator that Obama is such obvious double talk is pretty embarrassing.
Mike Whitney at CounterPunch, is worth reading:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/15/is-putin-being-lured-into-a-trap/
He argues that NATO is setting a trap. It probably is but Russia is unlikely to enter it.
The two constants in US Foreign Policy are filibustering, of which the Maidan events were a good example, and attempts to impose variants of the Monroe Doctrine.
The Bush Doctrine extended the Monroe Doctrine to the rest of the world: either states do as the US orders them or there will be consequences, regime changes, trade sanctions, racehorse heads on the pillows, broken legs, accidents to relatives and revocation of banking privileges.
The key to this crisis could be in south America, the original object of the Monroe Doctrine: there is a real political desire on the continent to escape the constant bullying of the US. In some countries, notably Bolivia and Venezuela, governments opposed to the US need real, irrevocable and uncompromising support. In others, emerging from the gringo torture chamber, such as Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Argentina the future is on a knife edge, as everywhere the light skinned ruling class supports the US because it supports their racial economic hegemony but popular movements and majorities everywhere hate the US.
The question for Russia, China, Iran and other states in the sights of US snipers is whether they will continue to wriggle and finesse their policies, running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, or whether they will throw in their lot with that of the poor.
It is the old Sam Adams observation ” If we don’t hang together, we will assuredly hang separately.”
The era of wars between nations is over. The war in Ukraine is between the global ruling class and the people they intend to devour.
In the end Putin and Lavrov will have to choose a side, if they want to assert independence they will have to take the side of the poor, and the front in the war will run through every city on earth.
The US is not just backing fascists or associated with the grubby remnants of fascism, it is Fascism in the international arena. It pursues fascist policies, with fascist objectives. Those objectives include, as they always did, a determination to wipe out any governments which introduce social or economic policies which, if emulated in the US would cost capitalists money and, more importantly, threaten their control over labour. In the C19th these policies involved crushing abolitionist regimes, refusing to allow countries which emancipated labour to succeed. In the C20th this involved the long cold war against Cuba, not a military threat but, potentially, a potent political threat.
What makes the situation in Ukraine so curious is what is not being said, what neither side is offering: the Kiev side is offering cuts in pensions and living standards, unemployment, hunger and low living standards. And what are the Donbas pro Russian side offering? Nationalisation of industry? Full employment? Higher living standards? Equitable taxation? Trade Union rights for the miners and steelworkers?
No, if they did the Kiev regime would crumble, instead, advised by Putin and his neo-liberal cronies they are trying to mobilise the masses on narrow questions of language rights, cultural heritage and religion. Hence the ability of the US and fascists to project their secular, gay marriage, blue jeans image as modern, desirable and inevitable.
Posted by: bevin | Apr 15 2014 17:05 utc | 41
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