New spin on and old imperialism The group of allies imposing their will on the lesser nations of the

world seems not to have changed much since the Opium Wars. There is not much difference in the membership list of England, Germany, France and the USA core group, we just don't have concessions on the Chinese coast any more. Japan is sort of part of the club, Russia is sometimes a partner, sometimes a rival. The way the G7 go about being the boss has taken some new turns after the 20th century. The last century started with gunboat diplomacy and ended with airstrike diplomacy. The new one is little different, but some methods are at play with an upgrade. Ukraine puts most of the new methods on display. We have managed protests, manipulated government structures, military aggressiveness and the spin of public opinion with little independent press. The protests have a long history. None of this is new. Back at that other September 11, then one where the US overthrew the elected Socialist, Salvador Allende government of Chile, a key element was a CIA supported strike. The right wing, middle class minorities of Venezuela and Thailand have made protest their main vehicle. They are all over the streets and all over the western news calling themselves "the people" yet they loose their nation's elections time and again.

In Ukraine last month part of the justification for tearing up the peace accord and overthrowing the president was that the protestors had been fired upon by snipers. Now it is already coming to light that both police and protestors were shot by the SAME snipers and that those snipers seemed to be from the opposition. During the failed coup attempt agains Hugo Chavez of Venezuela a similar tactic was tried. There were shots on right wing, anti government protestors fired from a bridge. Evidence linked these shooters to pro coup forces soon enough. The coup was rolled back by mass protest. US embassy military attachs and some Venezuelan military fled the country though a back exit. In both cases the links between the coup leaders, the protest groups and US influencers was high. In Venezuela the US has relentlessly supported the opposition against Chavez and now Maduro. In Ukraine, the US, by their own admission, has spent over five billion dollars on political groups to help move that country in the "right" direction. Venezuelan and Thai protestors and calling themselves the victims in public again. In Thailand the demand for "reform" is to have a government that is not elected

because the poor majority of Thais seem to vote for the wrong people. There has been one coup already. Ukraine has not held any elections since this crisis began and we have no idea what the public really thinks. We do know that the new Ukrainian government is plunging ahead holding votes of what is left of their parliament to throw out one president, "elect" another president, a prime minister, commit Ukraine to a new economic relationship with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, and there is a hint of new military ties to the North Atlantic Treaty Orgnaization. They seem to have backed off from nixing Russian as an official language and outlawing the two largest political parties, i.e. the majority Party of Regions and the Communists. This is part of the new flavor of the old game of manipulating parliaments and political systems. We are a long ways from the days when US troops under Reagan pulled the Governor General of Grenada out of bed to make him sign a request for help from the troops that had already invaded his country thus getting rid of the divided and turmoiled Justice, Education and Welfare party (JEWL movement) government (already killing each other) and their Cuban airport construction workers. The JEWL movement was guilty of being Socialists, friends of Nicaragua, composed of black people and speaking English. The US invaded when they were weak, the governor signed. When President Zelaya was pulled out of bed and held in his pajamas at the US airbase in Honduras before being flow to exile, it was with the "legitimate" support of the legislature and courts of the most corrupt and most violent nation in the Americas under heavy CIA and US private group influence. That is how our government got rid of a man who was elected as part of the land owning elite, but whose administration committed the high crime of making friends we did not want, Hugo Chavez, and helping his own nation's poor people. Helping poor people is un-American activity in today's world i guess. We sure don't put up with it here and every nation who tries it becomes a "bad guy" in our semi official corporate press. When we got rid of the "bad guy" president of Paraguay Fernando Lugo, it was without the theatre of the pajamas. The theatre used there was an impeachment of this ex priest, advocate of the poor, who was guilty of promoting land reform. The show trial was held where half a century of dictatorship had its nest for the Stroessner clan and his ruling Colorado Party. Since in the US media history began whenever the story suites the State Department's story, this would be back in that pre-history of US backed dictators. Stroessner was in the same cut as the Nicaraguan Somoza's and the Haitian Duvalier's, all with family dictatorships that rival the Assad's of Syria. In the old days, Stroessner just killed people like Lugo. Today Stroessner's party, the Colorado Party, and a few CIA and other US dollars buy enough votes to impeach him. Hey, they do everything with vote purchasing here, why not share our style of democracy with the world? At the end of the first Iraq war, Doonesbury had a strip celebrating the return of our

people from the war, talked about how they were blamed for loosing the war in Vietnam but this time were coming home as heroes. The punch line was that these were not returning soldiers, they were the press. Gone are the days of the hard hitting questions in the press conferences, or if they are asked gone are the days of them being transmitted widely. Ever since the US backed coup attempt against Hugo Chavez the refrain from the US press about Venezuelan accusations of US involvement in that coup end with "the US strongly denies those accusations." When I say they end with that, I mean that the discussion stops there. The fact that Venezuela has strong evidence to show US involvement, naming names, is never reported on. The same lack of followup, let alone challenge of the official view, comes straight up when Kerry says something along the lines of calling the Kiev government, its membership and its constitution legitimate while calling the government of Crimea, who just called for a referendum on joining back with the Russian Federation, illegitimate. Today's media does not ask why. Is the Kiev government legitimate? All we get is Putin says it isn't, but we don't like Putin because he is an authoritarian. Kerry says that it is, and he is a 'good guy' because we are Americans and we are good guys. For the life of me I can not find a report on how many deputies are left in that parliament. I heard a mention or two in a couple of reports that deputies have fled when the buildings were invaded by the protestors. I have also heard it called a rump parliament. What i have not heard is any serious discussion of who is left and who they represent. If Occupy protestors entered the capitol, chased out the majority Republicans and then held sessions that only included themselves and the Democrats, would that be legitimate? And this government in Crimea, who are they? Are they the same ones elected to their regional assembly before these protests began? And who are these troops and people in the streets? Just because a couple BBC reporters are suspicious of their high level of organization does not make them illegitimate, or not local people. If you want to listen to a weekly critique of our corporate media news, and get some hints about what kinds of lies of omission are this weeks flavor, I suggest you listen to Counterspin. http://fair.org/counterspin-radio/ From the reporting, which is mostly repeating what officials say, we get little idea of what is what. For all we know, both governments are illegitimate. It is even quite possible that all the accusations are true on every side. Was the Ukrainian president corrupt? Probably? Is Putin declaring Ukraine, or parts of Ukraine part of Russia's vital interest? Most defiantly. Was the West taking sides during the protests? No doubt. Did that add up to interference in Ukraine's internal affairs? With five billion dollars

and visits from John McCain, what do you think? We need to think about what we are being told. Kerry tells us that we can not respect "authoritarian governments" meaning Putin, throwing their weight around and that today we can not accept using military force in someone else's nation to defend our interests. One could write long and hard, and many do, about the hypocrisy of such statements. From Haiti to Bahrain US actions today are the exact opposite of what he is demanding of Russia. There is not room here to write about that. All I can say is that I feel totally offended to hear such talk from him considering what the US does and has been doing. It also convinces me that he is lying. So what are they lying to us about? Let's just take such things as the well being of the Ukrainian people, the quality of their democracy and independence of the Ukraine talk off the table because we have no reason to believe it. Coming from Kerry, using those words, we know not to believe it. My guess is that the West wants a few things. Ukraine is strategic. With Ukraine in their pocket, they have a strong foothold on the Black Sea, where until now, Russian has been the key naval power. Ever since the end of the Cold War, NATO has been pushing east and strategically pushing Russia back. Europe and the US probably want to diminish Russia's ability to challenge them. That may be reason enough for all this turmoil in western leaders minds. One of the reasons that the EU - Ukraine agreement was not signed, was because it had a strong security cooperation clause. The post Cold War aggressiveness toward Russia has never been fully explained. Another major world even that our media does not cover in any dept whatsoever. The last time something big happened on that front was when the West agreed not to put up an anti missal system across the fence from them in Poland. The time before that was when Bush W unilaterally pulled out of the anti-missile treaty. Much is going on here and I can not but wonder how this crisis with Ukraine fits in. There is no credible reason to think that it does not. Our governments do not do much when money is not to be made or protected. Ukraine is a breadbasket that Europe probably wants. It has serious industry too. They probably do not want it to participate in any kind of economic group with Russia and other nations in its region. EU membership does not allow for that. I doubt that the US and Europe feels very good about Ukraine participating in any economic block not run by them or using their Euros, Pounds and Dollars for trade. We should expect more. We should expect protests to be exploited and supported when it fits the bill, created if they do not start themselves. We should expect US diplomacy to create in-nation covers for its interventions along the lines of Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay and Ukraine. This is the pattern that they have been successful at and are now well trained to do. We should expect unexpected violence at those protests too.

More than anything, we should expect the media to act like their mouthpiece. They do little else.