Posted on 11/30/2004 6:56:14 AM PST by dead
The Western media has again fallen for the dubious propaganda of US stooges in Ukraine, writes John Laughland.
There was a time when the left was in favour of revolution, while the right stood unambiguously for the authority of the state. Not any more. This week two British newspapers - the anti-Iraq war Independent and the pro-Iraq war Telegraph - excitedly announced a "revolution" in Ukraine, while in the US the right-wing Washington Times welcomed "the people versus the power".
Whether it is Albania in 1997, Serbia in 2000, Georgia last November or Ukraine now, our media regularly peddle the same fairytale about how youthful demonstrators manage to bring down an authoritarian regime simply by attending a rock concert in a central square.
Two million anti-war demonstrators can stream though the streets of London and be politically ignored, but a few tens of thousands in Kiev are proclaimed to be "the people", while the Ukrainian police, courts and governmental institutions are discounted as instruments of oppression.
The Western imagination is so gripped by its mythology of popular revolution that we have become dangerously tolerant of blatant double standards in reporting. Enormous rallies have been held in Kiev in support of the Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovich, but they are not shown on our TV screens: if their existence is admitted, Yanukovich supporters are denigrated as having been "bussed in".
The demonstrations in favour of Viktor Yushchenko have laser lights, plasma screens, sophisticated sound systems, rock concerts, tents to camp in and huge quantities of orange clothing; yet we happily dupe ourselves that they are spontaneous.
We are told that a 96 per cent turnout in Donetsk, the home town of Yanukovich, is proof of electoral fraud. But apparently turnouts of over 80 per cent in areas which support Yushchenko are not. Nor are votes for Yushchenko of well over 90 per cent in three regions, which Yanukovich achieved only in two.
And whereas Yanukovich was officially credited with 54 per cent of the vote, the Western-backed President of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, officially polled 96.24 per cent of the vote in January. The observers who now denounce the Ukrainian election welcomed that result in Georgia, saying that it "brought the country closer to meeting international standards".
The blindness extends even to the posters which the "pro-democracy" group Pora has plastered all over Ukraine, depicting a jackboot crushing a beetle, an allegory of what Pora wants to do to its opponents.
Such dehumanisation of enemies has well-known antecedents - not least in Nazi-occupied Ukraine, when pre-emptive war was waged against the Red Plague emanating from Moscow - yet these posters have passed without comment.
Pora continues to be presented as an innocent band of students having fun in spite of the fact that - like its sister organisations in Serbia and Georgia, Otpor and Kmara - Pora is an organisation created and financed by Washington.
It gets worse. Plunging into the crowd of Yushchenko supporters in Independence Square after the first round of the election, I met two members of Una-Unso, a neo-Nazi party whose emblem is a swastika. They were unembarrassed about their allegiance, perhaps because last year Yushchenko and his allies stood up for the Socialist party newspaper, Silski Visti, after it ran an anti-Semitic article claiming Jews had invaded Ukraine alongside the German army in 1941.
On September 19, 2004, Yushchenko's ally, Alexander Moroz, told JTA-Global Jewish News: "I have defended Silski Visti and will continue to do so. I personally think the argument ... citing 400,000 Jews in the SS is incorrect, but I am not in a position to know all the facts."
Yushchenko, Moroz and their oligarch ally, Yulia Tymoshenko, cited a court order closing the paper as evidence of the Government's desire to muzzle the media. In any other country, support for anti-Semites would be shocking; in this case, our media do not even mention it.
Voters in Britain and the US have witnessed their governments lying brazenly about Iraq for over a year in the run-up to war, and with impunity. This is an enormous dysfunction in our so-called democratic system.
Our tendency to paint political fantasies on to countries such as Ukraine, and to present the West as a fairy godmother swooping in to save the day, is not only a way to salve a guilty conscience about our political shortcomings. It also blinds us to the reality of continued brazen Western intervention in the democratic politics of other countries.
The Guardian
John Laughland is a trustee of http://www.oscewatch.org and an associate of http://www.sandersresearch.com
Personally, I think the whole Ukranian situation might be due to the fact that Yushchenko andYanukovich have the same name, making articles extremely difficult to follow.
What do you expect from a guy named "Laughland?"
LOL. Ah gee. Another journalist with an opinion.
It is tough to separate Viktor Yushchenko from Viktor Yanukovich.
Because the Ukrainians bathe regularly. ;)
Yep, just more sophistry.
You can keep the two Viktors straight by remembering the the Russian backed one's name ends in -ich.
No he wasn't, but Yugoslavia was, so is Makedonia. We also interferred in Israel, getting Barak elected. Then there is Bulgaria, Moldovia, Ukraine and exiled oligarches in England and other areas were giving millions to Communists to beat Putin in 2003, something everyone ignored or forgot, that along with USAID to the leftists and oligarch parties there.
Which is actually a polish ending.
Screw you, commie wanker. See how quick you'd get your head sliced off by your "comrades" that are fighting against U.S. and British forces in Iraq. Go to hell.
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The Tainted Source by John Laughland "What intrigued me most about Laughland's book from the get go was the first chapter, Fascists and Federalists, which I found on the web. As a student of WWII it was only last year that I became aware of the sheer numbers of foreign volunteers for the Waffen SS and the extent of active collaboration with the National Socialist program from a broad spectrum of Europeans, not just Germans. Aside from documenting the efforts of the Nazis to cloak their grasp for world domination in the guise of defending 'European' civilization, Laughland shows that there was a sincere body of thought in France and Germany in the interwar years that rejected both old style nationalism and Bolshevik Russia, which unfortunately the Fascists were able to seize upon. However, the next time you hear some ignorant person describe an advocate of limited government and nationalism as 'a fascist' tell them about the first chapter of this book. The jackboot is on the other foot, so to speak. "More importantly than these dubious historical links is the lack of a democratic philosophy extending beyond just 'who gets what' in the minds of most European elites. I would caution the reader however, that Laughland does not talk much about the individuals on the Continent who are working to create a democratic and accountable United States of Europe - like Otto von Hapsburg. Laughland simply doesn't think it can be done. The last few chapters include a spirited defense of neoclassical liberalism. Laughland argues that borders are critical jurisdictions but not boundaries to free trade; the gold standard would lead to sounder money (all snickering from wonks and Fed worshippers aside); and law is a system based on objective moral values and not dirigiste bureaucratic management. I have seen no better exposition of the Euroskeptic position." [Amazon Review] |
Your concerns may be better directed looking at who is interfering with our elections. There is probably a sea of Chinese, Indian, European, and Mexican money floating many of our politicians.
Yeah ich means son of, as in son of a ich. Yar.
The wifey speaks Polish, she is from L'viv region. Her Father was Polish ancestry and his parents spoke Polish at home.
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