Crimea and Western ‘values’ – Escobar

Crimea and Western ‘values’
By Pepe Escobar – The Roving Eye – 14 March, 2014

Every sane sentient being knows that Ukraine’s “unity” is not worth a new hot or warm war. Or even the current Western-peddled Cold War-style hysteria. Especially when Russia, once again, fights fascism – as embodied by some of the key players now in power in Kiev, and the US and EU’s response is to relentlessly demonize Russia.

Crimea – historically, culturally, sentimentally – is Russian, conquered by Catherine the Great from the Ottomans in 1783. Sevastopol was founded by Catherine. If a swing band would play a version of I Left My Heart in Sevastopol, all hearts involved would be Russian.

Yet those eminent Western practitioners of state idolatry have ruled that the population of Crimea has no right to conduct a referendum to decide its future – be it rejoining Russia or remaining in Ukraine with a huge degree of autonomy, according to the 1992 constitution. The eminences could not possibly admit that does not suit their geopolitical power play.

Thus the current Mass; a ritualistic, hysterical invoking in unison of “international law” (Obama), (distorted) history and even morality (in the US’s case, considering the historical record, a positively dreadful joke).

No question the original inhabitants of Crimea are the Tatars – whose rights will be fully protected in a new Crimea. They had not achieved their self-determination for the same reason Native Americans also did not.

Yet much more alarming in the whole case is how the West once again conveniently, selectively manipulates the arbitrary carving of colonized lands – the key reason of ongoing, intractable geopolitical disasters.

South Sudan’s independence was obsessively fought for by Washington – helped by Hollywood clones of the Clooney variety. The pretext was to correct an arbitrary colonial carving. So that applies to Sudan, but it does not apply to Crimea.

Thomas Jefferson’s “insurgents” had the right to rebel against the British, but Crimeans cannot rebel against what most view as an illegal, fascist-laden, putschist regime in Kiev.

And that is superimposed on an arbitrary colonial carving; Ukrainian-born former premier Nikita Khrushchev, then at the head of the USSR, gave Crimea away to Ukraine, in the name of Soviet solidarity, without a Crimean referendum.

Washington – via a NATO war – dismantled the former Yugoslavia in the name of the “right of nations”. While Crimea is not allowed a peaceful referendum, Kosovo – essentially a drug mafia scam – had the right to be “liberated”. It would be so complicated to explain to public opinion that was essential for the maintenance of Camp Bondsteel – the largest military base outside of the US. The Empire of Bases trumps any “right of nations”. …more