By Dave Lindorff
The rot at the core of US international relations, domestic politics and the corporate media is evident in the American approach to the Ukraine crisis.
Just look at the freak-out from all quarters as the people of the eastern part of that country conduct, under conditions of attack by military units sent in by the Kiev putsch government, a peaceful plebiscite asking people to give their view as to whether they want some kind of sovereignty separating them from western Ukraine.
The official US State Department position on the balloting in Dohansk and Luhansk... was that the voting was "illegal" and "an attempt to create further division and disorder."
"The United States will not recognize the results of these illegal referenda," State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki.
The White House called the voting “illegitimate” and “illegal.”
The US has not once called the violent coup that overthrew Ukraine’s elected government illegitimate or illegal.
Indeed any violence during the voting, which appeared to actually be celebratory, came from Ukrainian troops. Even the Associated Press, which has largely been parroting the US line on separatists in eastern Ukraine, wrote:
“Although the voting in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions appeared mostly peaceful, armed men identified as members of the Ukrainian national guard opened fire on a crowd outside a town hall in Krasnoarmeisk, and an official with the region's insurgents said people were killed. It was not clear how many.”
The US corporate media have largely toed the official line, referring to the separatists in eastern Ukraine as violent when they have been in reality surprisingly restrained in the face of overt violence by military forces dispatched by Kiev. And they never mention the balloting in the east without mentioning that the US believes that Russia is behind that effort, though in fact Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin actually angered and annoyed separatists by calling on them -- unsuccessfully -- to delay their voting plan.
But let’s analyze that position calling the voting “illegal.”
How is a plebiscite ever illegal?
For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new, uncompromising, four-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/2312 [1]