Barack’s spin on Ukraine

Barack Obama is livid.  He is angry about unconfirmed reports (‘unconfirmed’ is the word used by the US-friendly British press) of Russian military movements inside Ukraine.  Now, for the record, the area in the Ukraine that Obama is suddenly worried about, Crimea, happens to be the only Russian-majority region in that country and is the home of Russian’s Black Sea fleet.  So ‘movement,’ confirmed or not, could not have been something that happened yesterday.  In short, it is not ‘news’.

There are also unconfirmed reports that men in Russian military uniforms are blockading a military airport in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol while men in military uniform without national insignia are patrolling an airport in the Crimean capital Simferopol. Enough to upset any Ukranian, if true.  On the other hand if sovereignty is the issue then the presence of the Black Sea fleet itself would be an infringement.  By the same token, though, each and every unit in each of the more than 100 countries where there is US military presence constitutes sovereignty-infringement. 

But Barack is upset.  He is upset over the issue of sovereignty.  ‘Any violation of Ukraine sovereignty would be deeply destabilizing,’ he says.  He adds, ‘there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine’.  That’s a threat if ever there was one.

What is strange is that if military intervention ‘costs’ then the US national debt (metaphorically speaking) would be 100 times bigger than it is now.  If it is the USA that is going to make interventionists pay, they the US would have attempted self-destruction a countless number of times over the past several decades.  Stranger still is the fact that the USA was caught red-handed funding and otherwise supporting mobs that overthrew the Ukraine government a few days previously.  Perhaps non-military ‘intervention’ is okay in Washington’s book and military involvement a no-no?  But then again, how can a country that invaded Iraq on a lie, bombs civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, funds, trains and arms militants in a dozen country at any given time, have the gumption to complain?  It is now known, after all, that the US deployed troops disguised as Arabs in the much celebrated ‘Arab Spring’ offensives that turned the Middle East into a barren and endless winter, paradoxically. 

But Barack is worried about ‘destabilizing’ the region.  He thinks this ‘unconfirmed’ move by Russia ‘represents a profound interference in matters that must be determined by the Ukrainian people,’ and ‘would be a clear violation of Russia's commitment to respect the independence and sovereignty and borders of Ukraine - and of international laws.’ 

This same Barack sent troops into a house located in Pakistan, watched on television while his men dragged out an unarmed man, shot him dead in cold blood.  He ordered his men to airlift the body to Afghanistan and from there to drop it into the sea.  That’s ‘respect for independence and sovereignty and borders’?  That was just one man, but what was done to Osama bin Laden, the US government consciously does for entire countries. All the time. 

And Mr Holier-Than-Thou Obama also knows the following: The U.S. has not ratified, or participated in, a series of core UN conventions on human rights, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

So what do we have here, ladies and gentlemen?  Crisis-makers lamenting about crises?  Compulsive invaders getting hot under the collar because someone is cutting in on the action?  Hypocrites with selective memory?  Are they expecting the world to cheer?

Cut to the chase, this is superpower reality.  The US is fond of saying that it is the sole super power, but considering the fact that China owns that country’s debt and the fact that a man wearing a turban and sporting a beard is seen as a threat to the security of the US, one really is hard put to take seriously these ‘concerns’ expressed by Barack Obama. 

If ordinary people were asked whether they like people from other countries interfering in their lives (forget invading their countries), they’ll probably say ‘heck, we don’t even like our governments telling us what to do’.  It is not a question of whether Russia is white and the US black, vice versa, or if they come in shades of grey.  It is about people not having the privilege of determining their futures.  It is about being asked to inhabit other people’s versions of their reality. 

If Barack believes that the Ukranian people must determine matters themselves, then the principle can be applied across the board.  Come on, Barack, when are you going to issue an order for all US troops to return to and remain on US soil, for ever and ever (amen)?