by Michael Parenti
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Michael Parenti Blog
michaelparenti.org
April 3, 2014
More than 83 percent of the qualified voters of Crimea recently participated in a referendum to rejoin Russia. And of that number well over 93 percent voted to separate themselves from Ukraine and once more become a part of Russia, in what was a massively one-sided victory.
What should be kept in mind is that Crimea would never have pursued such an action, and Russia would never had been receptive to such a course, were it not that Ukraine was in the grip of disruptive forces that were driving toward “regime change.”
“Regime change” is a form of action designed to make it impossible for the existing government to govern. We have seen this organized chaos and endless disruption in various other countries. Well organized groups are financed and equipped by outside western interests. Ultra-nationalists and mercenaries take hold of the protesting crowds and set the direction and pace of action, secure in the knowledge that they have the global reach of the western powers at their backs. The most retrogressive among them in Kiev launched slanderous attacks against Jews, Negroes, Chinese, Muscovites, and—of course—Communists.
In Ukraine, crypto-fascist groups like Svoboda, the Right Sector, and others have had ample funds to keep thousands of people fed and comfortable on the streets of Kiev for weeks, complete with well-made marching flags, symbols, and signs in various languages. Meanwhile the western media report everything the way the White House wants. And the “protestors” perpetrate acts of disruption, violence, and terror.
This disruption is something we have seen in numerous other countries—at this very time from Venezuela to Thailand. The goal of these western-financed attacks has been to make the world safe for the 1%, the global super rich. Ukraine citizens who think they are fighting for democracy will eventually discover that they are really serving the western plutocracy. They will be left with a new government filled with old intentions. Ukrainians will end up with nothing to show for their efforts except a still more depressed and more corrupt economy, an enormous IMF debt, a worsening of social services, and an empty “democracy,” led by corrupt opportunists like Tymoshenko.
Russia has stepped in on behalf of Russian Crimea. So Russia is now maligned by the western global plutocrats who seek ways to put Moscow in isolated retreat. Putin is denounced and demonized at every opportunity. Has anyone in the U.S. media ever read Putin’s speeches? They are so much more clear and sane than the lies put out by Obama (as in Obama’s Brussels speech about how the U.S. has saved and democratized Iraq). The intent is to encircle and reduce Russia to a frightened satellite. But that is much easier said than done. Obama has very few tricks and trumps left to play.
Michael Parenti is an award winning, internationally known author. His two most recent books are The Face of Imperialism (a critique of the U.S. global empire; 2011) and Waiting for Yesterday: Pages from a Street Kid’s Life (an ethnic memoir about his early life in Italian Harlem; 2013). For further information about his work, visit his website: www.michaelparenti.org.
From the archives:
Rick Rozoff: Ukrainian Crisis and NATO at age 65, interviewed by David Swanson
How Americans Can Help World Peace by Finian Cunningham
Vladimir Putin: Rock Star Made in America by Cameron Salisbury
This Is Why Washington Has Sought To Create A Crisis Over In Ukraine by Finian Cunningham
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“The goal of these western-financed attacks has been to make the world safe for the 1%, the global super rich.”
Michael delivers the core truth in a neat nutshell. Moreover, Yanukovych was/is every bit as corrupt as all the rest of the rabid mob despite his craven appeals to Moscow to restore Crimea.
This is now one big mafia-style turf war, as far as we can see in every direction. The American watch has sanctioned widespread anarchy.
The naive perception that tough “strong-man” leadership is always indispensable is just plain dumb.. This is an incredibly primitive notion of government. It may work in rare exceptions, but generally as a principle for global administration sui generis, it is totally false and de facto misogynist.
No the solution to the world’s ills is enlightened governance not dictatorship by elites. Talk is cheap, promises are empty. We need to see embedded & accountable legal process through the appropriate checks and balances of ethically composed regulatory institutions.
No exceptions!
The US can no longer be seen as a force for freedom, quite the contrary ~ it is the most cynically despotic and corrupt system of all, simply because it has abused its power and privilege so egregiously by peddling its “right” to special treatment by the international courts.
What “right?” Universal dominion?
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Professor Parenti has it right, again!
What we are seeing in Ukraine is part of the ” Project For A New American Century” and “Full Spectrum Dominance” (for control of the world) by the United States and the NATO “storm troopers” which the ineffective United Nations has no control over.
As Dr. Parenti points out in this article, the average Ukrainian citizen will have even less once the “austerity demands” for loan guarantees dictated by the infamous international bankers are implemented. While the brutality in the streets (RT.com covered it very well) was at it’s heights, the Wall Street financiers and the neo-nazi thugs who overthrew the democratically elected government, were already agree on measures to reduce pensions, wages, health benefits, etc. of the working-class in order to get the loans – and the high usury fees which must be paid at all costs.
Sad to say, most people are easily duped by subtle and not so subtle propaganda from the powers that be.
WW3 is right around the corner. American imperial hubris is at it’s peak. The Russians (and other Soviet citizens) were the ones who inflicted the most casualties in defeating the Nazi menace and consequently lost over 20,000,000 people (the worse “holocaust in human history), they are worried about the US/NATO hegemony so close to their borders and are preparing for the showdown.
Ignorance is NOT bliss, because when the vast majority let a small minority do the thinking for them, tyrants take over. History is replete with the lust for power and money by evil thinkers (and doers) who mastered the art of manipulation to control the masses to do their bidding.
Parenti is an honest truther who has had an honorable career as a marxist political scientist, but he seems to have gotten tired as he got old. His analysis is not as sharp as it has been earlier.
Svoboda and Right Sector are not cryto-fascists, they are more specially Ukrainian Nazies, descended historically from the Hitler ideology of Germany. Unbeknwnst to most Americans, the US intelligence agencies supported the remains of the Waffen SS, and imported thousands of them to the USA and financed them in Europe. The Nazi groups in the Ukraine are a continuation of them.
The snipers who shot both cops and protesters were under the command of Perubiy, a founder of Svoboda and its military commander. The head of security of Ukraine has publically stated that he was asked by the protesters being shot at, including members of Svoboda and Right Sector, to attack the snipers in a building controlled by Perubiy, but Perubiy would not give permission to do so. There is another report that Perubiy was financed by American intelligence.
Among the protesters was CANVAS, a rank and file organization financed by the US. The leader of this group was associated with Stratfor, a private American intelligence agency, and his wife worked there a year. The Nazi street fighters and some of the other protesters were financed by the US, as occurred previously in the Orange Revolution installing Tymoshenko, again running for president.
The coup was not triggered by the turn to Russia for financing, as is stated in the media, but on Germany, France and Russia agreeing on new elections. The putsch was to prevent the increasing closeness of Germany and Russia, freezing out the US. And that is the primary function of the new Cold War that the US is sponsoring; to keep the US in, Russia out, and Germany down, as the first Nato leader put it.