Issue #1630      March 12, 2014

Hands off Ukraine and Venezuela

Statement United National Antiwar Coalition

The hypocrisy of Secretary of State John Kerry’s statement on Face the Nation: “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext”, is beyond belief. What about the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or regime change in Libya, or the threats to bomb Syria and attack Iran?

The US has waged a massive propaganda campaign of misinformation, distortion, and outright lies and the national media has taken the State Department’s “facts” and disseminated them without question or challenge. News about the US/EU role in creating the current crisis is buried.

The US is the only country that has its troops throughout the world in over 120 countries. It sends drones and special operations forces to kill anyone and anywhere it chooses and uses its vast economic power to undercut any government that will not submit to its policies. Although there is lip service to concerns about democracy and sovereignty, the reality is that the US acts in the interests of preserving its imperialist power and wealth.

Ukraine and Venezuela are not exceptions to this rule of imperialist intervention. For 20 years, US$5 billion was invested in Ukraine to support the opposition and to create tens of thousands of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to move the country more towards the US and EU and their policies. In an intercepted phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine, she discusses who the US wants to be the head of the new illegitimate government, and lo and behold, the US pick, Arseniy Yatseniuk, is named as the interim Ukrainian leader. This is clearly outside intervention in the affairs of a sovereign country that would not be tolerated if directed at the US or its allies.

What are the real objectives and why is Russia so alarmed? Could it be the US-NATO campaign to militarily surround Russia and bring neighbouring countries into the western military and financial orbit? Might it be that the largest supply of natural gas in the world is in Russia and the pipelines go through Ukraine, or that global warming is opening the Arctic to oil drilling and Russia borders the Arctic? It is clear that Russia will not passively sit by while the Western-backed coup, led by violent fascist forces and local billionaires, overthrows a democratically elected government and installs a puppet regime on its border.

Next article – IWD March Sydney

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