Mar 06, 2014

This article from a Canadian source sums up how the real world functions today in the use of political power. What Russia is doing in Ukraine and Crimea is no different from what Washington has been doing for a very long time in “protecting its interests.” The USA openly invaded Grenada and Panama over “national interests.” They have interfered with the sovereignty of other nations regularly, including using drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and other countries.

The US government always provides a plausible excuse for its own violation of other nations’ sovereign rights, but hypocritically refuses the same right to any other nation. That is politics, and no one should take anything they say at face value.

Here is the article. I took the liberty of reproducing a portion of it….

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/the-ukraine-crisis-through-the-whimsy-of-international-law-1.2559980

Listening to U.S. President Barack Obama bang on this week about the importance of world opinion and obeying international law and respecting sovereignty and being on the right side of history, you had to wonder whether he didn't have a little voice in his head whispering: "Really? Seriously? I'm actually saying this stuff?"…

Stated motivation aside, though, what Putin is doing is really no different from what other world powers do: protecting what they regard as national self-interest.

And so far, he's done it without bloodletting.

Imagine, for a moment, what Washington would do if, say, Bahrain's Shia population, covertly supported by Tehran, staged a successful uprising and began to push itself into Iran's orbit.

The U.S. Fifth Fleet is headquartered in Bahrain, just as Russia's Black Sea Fleet is parked at its huge naval bases in the Crimea.

To pose the scenario is to answer the question of how America would react….

Victoria Nuland, a senior American diplomat, was caught in flagrante delicto a few weeks back, chatting with another American official about which Ukrainian opposition figures should and shouldn't be installed.

Washington's reply: It was unconscionable of Russia to intercept and leak that discussion.

In Obama's case, sitting beside him on Monday as he gave his lecture on international law from the Oval Office was close ally Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israeli prime minister, having just engaged in a protracted, robust handshake for the cameras, presides over a country that operates a military occupation in the West Bank, an occupation that includes Israeli settlements, which violate the international law Obama was demanding Putin obey.

The U.S. insists that Israel's occupation can only be solved by respectful negotiation between the parties themselves, and it vehemently opposes punishing Israel with the sort of moves currently being contemplated against Russia.

It's easy to go on and on in this vein — Britain's prime minister, who leads a nation that helped invade Iraq on a false pretext, denouncing Putin's pretext for going into Crimea. The NATO powers that helped bring about the independence of Albanian Kosovars complaining about the separatist aspirations of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, etc.

But that's diplomacy. Hypocritical declarations and acts are woven into its essence.

What's remarkable is the unspoken pact among the Western news media to report it all so uncritically.

When Obama spoke, the gaggle of reporters in attendance rushed to report his statements, mostly at face value.