Text 5590, 102 rader
Skriven 2004-12-01 08:53:44 av Stephen Hayes (5:7106/20.0)
Ärende: Debate: Western interference in Ukraine
===============================================
* Forwarded (from: DEBATE_FMY) by Stephen Hayes using timEd/2 1.10.y2k.
* Originally from family.debate@family-bbs.net (8:8/2) to All.
* Original dated: Tue Nov 30, 03:25

From: family.debate@family-bbs.net (Debate)
From: "Steve Hayes" <khanyab@lantic.net>

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/LAU411A.html

The Spectator     5 November  2004

How the US and Britain are intervening in Ukraines elections

by John Laughland

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 countrys 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 Yushchenkos 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 Wests 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 Ukraines Russophone citizens away from
Russia proper. That is why the West wants it.

-+- Debate
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