{"id":55635,"date":"2015-03-23T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=55635"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:25:56","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:25:56","slug":"obamas-double-standard-on-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/03\/obamas-double-standard-on-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama\u2019s Double-Standard on Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

He Attacks Russia, then Condemn\u2019s Putin for Defending Russia from His Attack<\/em><\/p>\n

Ukraine is considered by geostrategists (both Republican and Democratic<\/a>) to be militarily the most important adjoining nation to Russia, serving as the chief buffer to attacks against Russia from the west. Since 1783, Russia has had its key Black Sea naval base located in Crimea, which used to be part of Russia 1783-1954; the Soviet Union\u2019s Nikita Khrushchev blithely donated Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, though the residents in Crimea didn\u2019t want that \u2014 and no referendum was taken on it. After the Soviet Union broke up in 1992, this naval base continued but instead on a long-term lease from Ukraine.<\/p>\n

For Ukraine to become anti-Russian would be like for Mexico to become anti-American: even worse than when Cuba became anti-American in 1959. Mexico, of course, isn\u2019t anti-American, but, during Barack Obama\u2019s second term, Ukraine did, indeed, become anti-Russian. It happened not via any democratic revolution (such as American propaganda pretended), but via a bloody coup. Here is how it transpired:<\/p>\n

After Mr. Obama (who had been\u00a0raised surrounded by CIA operatives<\/a>) finally became elected to a second term, he switched his key official controlling Ukrainian policy from the benign internationalist\u00a0Philip Gordon<\/a>, who considered America\u2019s chief enemy to be global jihadism, to the hard-right America-supremacist\u00a0Victoria Nuland<\/a>, who considers America\u2019s chief enemy to be instead the nation of Russia.<\/p>\n

Nuland had originally been brought into Bill Clinton\u2019s Administration when the nationalistic Russia-hater Strobe Talbott in Clinton\u2019s State Department made her his Chief of Staff; she then became Vice President Dick Cheney\u2019s foreign-affairs advisor, and was brought back again into the State Department by Hillary Clinton in 2011. In September 2013, Nuland was promoted to become Obama\u2019s Assistant Secretary of State for European and\u00a0Eurasian Affairs, working under John Kerry, and she promptly set herself to the task of overthrowing the democratically elected pro-Russian Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych \u2014 to turn Ukraine from pro-Russian to anti-Russian.<\/p>\n

Here<\/a>\u00a0is Nuland, speaking by phone with Obama\u2019s Ambassador to Ukraine, on 4 February 2014, telling him whom to get to be appointed as the leader of Ukraine after the democratically elected pro-Russian President of Ukraine will be overthrown on 22 February 2014, which happened just 18 days later in\u00a0a very bloody coup.<\/a>\u00a0The man she chose, \u201cYats,\u201d got the appointment. The founder of the \u201cprivate CIA\u201d firm Stratfor has said that this was\u00a0\u201cthe most blatant coup in history.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0The Czech President has said that\u00a0\u201conly poorly informed people\u201d<\/a>\u00a0don\u2019t know that it was a coup and equate it with Czechoslovakia\u2019s authentically democratic 1968 \u201cVelvent Revolution\u201d against the Soviet Union. Instead of the tactful \u201cpoorly informed,\u201d the simple reality is: deceived. The American public are deceived.<\/p>\n

Here<\/a>\u00a0is a member of Ukraine\u2019s parliament, or Rada, speaking on 20 November 2013, prior to the start of \u201cMaidan\u201d demonstrations against Yanukovych, and even before Yanukovych had announced that he would turn down the EU\u2019s offer to Ukraine, in which this parliamentarian is describing in remarkable detail the preparations that the U.S. Embassy already had underway to produce a coup which would bring down Yanukovych and replace him with a leader who would be controlled from Washington. Hackers had gotten into the American Embassy\u2019s emails, and this parliamentarian reported what they had discovered. He says:<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican instructors explained there how\u00a0social networks and Internet technologies can\u00a0be used for targeted manipulation of public\u00a0opinion as well as to activate potential protest\u00a0to provoke violent unrest on the territory of\u00a0Ukraine \u2014 radicalization of the population,\u00a0and triggering of infighting. American\u00a0instructors show examples of successful use of\u00a0social networks to organize protests in Egypt,\u00a0Tunisia and Libya. \u2018Tech Camp\u2019\u00a0representatives currently hold conferences\u00a0throughout Ukraine<\/em>. A total of five events have\u00a0been held so far.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This plan was built upon something that the previous Ambassador<\/a> (whom Obama had appointed in 2009) had actually started even before Nuland was appointed.\u00a0Here<\/a>\u00a0is an announcement from the Embassy in Ukraine, on 1 March 2013, titled, \u201cU.S. Embassy Hosted TechCamp Kyiv 2.0 to Build Technological\u00a0Capacity of Civil Society.\u201d (That Ambassador is now our Ambassador to Russia.)<\/p>\n

Steve Weissman at Reader Supported News provided, a year ago, on 25 March 2014,\u00a0the best backgrounder on the man whom Obama chose in 2013 to serve as America\u2019s new Ambassador in Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt,<\/a>\u00a0the person who worked with Nuland, and it is clear from his background that he was the perfect person on the ground in Kiev to carry out the instructions from an extreme nationalist and imperialist such as Nuland.<\/p>\n

So: this was a coup, arranged in the White House. It was Obama to Kerry to Nuland to Pyatt.<\/p>\n

Here<\/a>\u00a0is the phone-conversation right after the coup, in which the Foreign Affairs chief of the EU receives from her investigator in Kiev, his finding as to what had happened \u2014 that it was a coup and not a democratic overthrow, not a democratic revolution at all.<\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin knew about all of these things while they were happening. He knew that Obama was clearly set upon attacking Russia and on using Ukraine as the proxy-state to get the conflict going. He acted promptly on this knowledge: For example, he sent an advanced ABM missile system<\/a> to Crimea \u2014 suitable to shoot down planes or anything \u2014 to prevent the Ukrainian Air Force from attacking Crimea in the lead-up to the 16 Marcch 2014 referendum.<\/p>\n

As I have\u00a0pointed out previously,<\/a>\u00a0the population of Crimea, both before and after the coup, wanted very much to return to Russia. The 96% vote for that in the 16 March 2014 Crimean referendum turns out to be exactly concordant with the Gallup polls that the U.S. Government commissioned and that were taken both before and after the referendum. Gallup found overwhelming public support in Crimea for returning to Russia, and found that overwhelmingly the 500 Crimeans who were sampled after the referendum thought that the 96% vote for returning to Russia was authentically reflecting Crimean opinion on the matter.<\/p>\n

Now, with that as the actual history of America\u2019s aggression against Russia during President Obama\u2019s second term, consider that, on 16 March 2015, which was the first anniversary of the referendum in Crimea, Jen Psaki, at the U.S. State Department headlined,\u00a0\u201cOne Year Later \u2014 Russia\u2019s Occupation of Crimea,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and she said:<\/p>\n

\u201cOn this one year anniversary of the sham \u2018referendum\u2019 in\u00a0Crimea, held in clear violation\u00a0of Ukrainian law and the\u00a0Ukrainian constitution, the United States reiterates its\u00a0condemnation of a vote that was not voluntary,\u00a0transparent, or democratic. We do not,\u00a0nor will we,\u00a0recognize Russia\u2019s attempted annexation and call on\u00a0President Putin to end\u00a0his country\u2019s occupation of\u00a0Crimea.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the way that the U.S., which is occupying Ukraine (by coup<\/a>), talks about Russia, which protected the Crimeans from being subjected to the hell<\/a> that the people in Donbass are now experiencing from the Ukrainian Occupying Regime, no legal Government at all. And, for that \u2014 the sheer illegality<\/em> of what Obama did \u2014 just read\u00a0this.<\/a> Then consider that Obama is demanding that the entirely undemocratic and forced transfer of Crimea by the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954 must stand as being legal, while this entirely democratic plebiscite on the issue in 2014 must be called \u201cnot voluntary, transparent, or democratic.\u201d That takes some nerve<\/em> (and a deceived public).<\/p>\n

Ms. Psaki continues with her string of lies, including:<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last year, the human rights situation in Crimea\u00a0has deteriorated dramatically,\u00a0with mounting repression\u00a0of minority communities and faiths, in particular Crimean\u00a0Tatars, and systematic denial of fundamental freedoms.\u00a0Local residents have been\u00a0detained, interrogated, and\u00a0disappeared and NGOs and independent media have\u00a0been\u00a0driven out of the peninsula. These brutalities are\u00a0unacceptable and we call on Russia to\u00a0stop further\u00a0abuses.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

She describes the situation in Crimea as if it were instead the actual situation in Donbass, with all of the U.S. Government\u2019s stooge-regime bombing and even firebombing the residents there in order to, simply, get rid of them.<\/a><\/p>\n

Adolf Hitler could learn a thing or two from this man O\u2019Bomba.<\/p>\n

Obama is the aggressor here, just as Hitler was the aggressor in Poland in 1939. And O\u2019Bomba blames Russia as the aggressor, just as Hitler blamed Poland.<\/p>\n

Obama overthrew the legal Government, and replaced it by this illegal one. But now he criticizes Putin as if he were the aggressor instead of the defender here. And Obama demands that the Soviet dictator\u2019s forced transfer of Crimea to Ukraine be legal and that Putin\u2019s defense of Crimeans\u2019 democratic self-determination in response to that coup be considered illegal.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the Big Lie, all over again, but this time backed by, and yet also up against, nuclear weapons, and thus far more dangerous than before.<\/p>\n

How did America manage to be headed by such a monster? We Americans need to ponder that. This isn\u2019t a partisan issue. I voted for Obama both times, as the lesser of two evils. But now both Parties are outright rotten. This is not a democracy any longer. Illusions to the contrary must end \u2014 and soon. Before we get to World War III.<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 <\/em>They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/a>,<\/em> and of\u00a0<\/em>Christ\u2019s Ventriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity<\/a>, and\u00a0of\u00a0Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Ukraine to become anti-Russian would be like for Mexico to become anti-American: even worse than when Cuba became anti-American in 1959. During Barack Obama\u2019s second term, Ukraine did, indeed, become anti-Russian. It happened not via any democratic revolution (such as American propaganda pretended), but via a bloody coup. Here is how it transpired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}