Posted on 12/01/2004 4:13:08 PM PST by Destro
Issue: 6 November 2004
Western aggression
John Laughland on how the US and Britain are intervening in Ukraine’s elections
A few years ago, a friend of mine was sent to Kiev by the British government to teach Ukrainians about the Western democratic system. His pupils were young reformers from western Ukraine, affiliated to the Conservative party. When they produced a manifesto containing 15 pages of impenetrable waffle, he gently suggested boiling their electoral message down to one salient point. What was it, he wondered? A moment of furrowed brows produced the lapidary and nonchalant reply, ‘To expel all Jews from our country.’
It is in the west of Ukraine that support is strongest for the man who is being vigorously promoted by America as the country’s next president: the former prime minister Viktor Yushchenko. On a rainy Monday morning in Kiev, I met some young Yushchenko supporters, druggy skinheads from Lvov. They belonged both to a Western-backed youth organisation, Pora, and also to Ukrainian National Self-Defence (Unso), a semi-paramilitary movement whose members enjoy posing for the cameras carrying rifles and wearing fatigues and balaclava helmets. Were nutters like this to be politically active in any country other than Ukraine or the Baltic states, there would be instant outcry in the US and British media; but in former Soviet republics, such bogus nationalism is considered anti-Russian and therefore democratic.
It is because of this ideological presupposition that Anglo-Saxon reporting on the Ukrainian elections has chimed in with press releases from the State Department, peddling a fairytale about a struggle between a brave and beleaguered democrat, Yushchenko, and an authoritarian Soviet nostalgic, the present Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovych. All facts which contradict this morality tale are suppressed. Thus a story has been widely circulated that Yushchenko was poisoned during the electoral campaign, the fantasy being that the government was trying to bump him off. But no British or American news outlet has reported the interview by the chief physician of the Vienna clinic which treated Yushchenko for his unexplained illness. The clinic released a report declaring there to be no evidence of poisoning, after which, said the chief physician, he was subjected to such intimidation by Yushchenko’s entourage — who wanted him to change the report — that he was forced to seek police protection.
It has also been repeatedly alleged that foreign observers found the elections fraught with violations committed by the government. In fact, this is exclusively the view of highly politicised Western governmental organisations like the OSCE — a body which is notorious for the fraudulent nature of its own reports, and which in any case came to this conclusion before the poll had even taken place — and of bogus NGOs, such as the Committee of Ukrainian Voters, a front organisation exclusively funded by Western (mainly American) government bodies and think-tanks, and clearly allied with Yushchenko. Because they speak English, the political activists in such organisations can easily nobble Anglophone Western reporters.
Contrary allegations — such as those of fraud committed by Yushchenko-supporting local authorities in western Ukraine, carefully detailed by Russian election observers but available only in Russian — go unreported. So too does evidence of crude intimidation made by Yushchenko supporters against election officials. The depiction is so skewed that Yushchenko is presented as a pro-Western free-marketeer, even though his fief in western Ukraine is an economic wasteland; while Yanukovych is presented as pro-Russian and statist, even though his electoral campaign is based on deregulation and the economy has been growing at an impressive clip. The cleanliness and prosperity of Kiev and other cities have improved noticeably.
There is, however, one thing which separates the two main candidates, and which explains the West’s determination to shoo in Yushchenko: Nato. Yanukovych has said he is against Ukraine joining; Yushchenko is in favour. The West wants Ukraine in Nato to weaken Russia geopolitically and to have a new big client state for expensive Western weaponry, whose manufacturers fund so much of the US political process.
Yanukovych has also promised to promote Russian back to the status of second state language. Since most Ukrainian citizens speak Russian, since Kiev is the historic birthplace of Christian Russia, and since the current legislation forces tens of millions of Russians to Ukrainianise their names, this is hardly unreasonable. The continued artificial imposition of Ukrainian as the state language — started under the Soviets and intensified after the fall of communism — will be a further factor in ripping Ukraine’s Russophone citizens away from Russia proper. That is why the West wants it.
bump
You should try promoting American values, like free elections, rather than pimping yourself out for some foreign Church.
thats only the tip of the iceberg...
do some searches on church burnings so far I found 4 where 3 moscow patriarchate orthodox churches & 1 ukranian orthodox church were burned in Lviv-IvanoFrankivsk-Ternopil regions.
The UK's Spectator is now the voice of the Orthodox religion? And here I thought it was the voice of the British Conservative Tories. Anyway are you saying that this expose should not have been posted?
"So too does evidence of crude intimidation made by Yushchenko supporters against election officials. "
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Whatever... thats why when they changed the rules to allow parliments to vote on a secret ballot they gave a vote of no confidence to the Russia backed guy. Before, when were all identified by their votes, they couldn't because of the intimindation of the mafiosa type crowd.
weird article.
It is supposed to be subjective.
So only one side is evil and the other is perfect democratic legion of goodness in your view? and if you have something to say you are a biased no good s.o.b. who is against democracy.
Whos one sided here ah? Only one side shown on tv but there is two sides to the story ... people voted for Yanukovich maybe the elections were fixed but not all 15 million votes were fake.
Why do I have a feeling that it reads a lot like the 1960s "Third Worldist" Indonesian President Sukarno's rants against "neocolonialism" and "Western imperialism"?
What I'm saying is that if you weren't so hell bent on supporting that which you think is in the best interests of your co-religionists, you'd have figured out that Laughland is an Anti-American twit long ago, and would save his swill for the nitwits over at Antiwar.com rather than wasting FR's server space with it.
Torie and anti-American? In what universe?
Yea - only this time the slant is right wing.
I would have figured that democracy would have been one of those simple litmus tests we could all agree upon.
Why is that the same people who support KLA, support also Yushchenko?
John Laughland is clearly anti-American, if he were to be shown to be a Torie I would be quite surprised. What is thouroughly disgusting is that such an example of yellow journalism is being posted as a serious article. Laughland is a member of that hallowed pantheon of journalists who write for the Guardian. Some examples of his writing will help you get a sense of where he is coming from (and where the Putin groupies are coming from as well):
The Prague racket
Nato is now a device to exert control and extract cash. Those who resist, like Belarus, are punished
John Laughland
Friday November 22, 2002
The Guardian
The revolution televised
The western media's view of Ukraine's election is hopelessly biased
John Laughland
Saturday November 27, 2004
The Guardian
John Laughland: Who observes the observers?
The west's condemnation of Zimbabwe's election process is a breathtaking case of double standards. The chasm that opened up between the various teams of observers at the Zimbabwean elections shows the urgency of reformulating one of the oldest questions of political philosophy: who observes the observers?
By Guardian Newspapers, 3/18/2002
Oil will be the driving factor for military intervention in Sudan
By John Laughland
August 3, 2004
The Guardian, August 2, 2004
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