{"id":19980,"date":"2014-03-04T07:44:45","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T14:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=19980"},"modified":"2014-03-04T07:44:45","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T14:44:45","slug":"ukraine-the-dangers-of-dealing-with-delusional-western-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=19980","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine: The Dangers of Dealing with Delusional Western Leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ukraine: The Dangers of Dealing with Delusional Western Leaders<\/strong>
\nFinian CUNNINGHAM – 04 March, 2014 – The Strategic Culture Foundation<\/p>\n

Fittingly, given the coincidence of the US cinema Oscars ceremony held at the weekend, American politicians and their Western allies were also starring in bravura performances of hypocrisy and double think with regard to their denunciations of Russia\u2019s recent security response to chaos in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Increased military maneuvers apparently by Russian troops in Ukraine\u2019s southern Crimean Peninsula over the weekend were met with strutting over-the-top reactions from Washington and other Western members of the so-called Group of Eight economic nations.<\/p>\n

The US, Britain, France and Canada said they were canceling plans to attend the G8 summit to be held in Sochi later this June in protest over what they said was Russia\u2019s \u00abviolation of Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty\u00bb. German Chancellor Angela Merkel declined to endorse calls for Russia\u2019s suspension from the G8, however the German leader in a phone call with American President Barack Obama complained that the Russian head of state, Vladimir Putin, was \u00abliving in another world\u00bb, according to the New York Times. <\/p>\n

British Prime Minister David Cameron said he agreed with Obama\u2019s earlier admonition to Russia that there \u00abmust be significant costs\u00bb imposed on Moscow for its military actions in Crimea. <\/p>\n

French President Francois Hollande issued a statement urging Putin to \u00abnot use force\u00bb in any involvement of Russian troops on Ukrainian territory. That\u2019s a nice touch of self-parody from Hollande given that he ordered hundreds of French troops into the Central African Republic in recent months \u2013 an intervention that sparked thousands of deaths from sectarian clashes between Muslim and Christian communities there and which has now resulted in a full-blow humanitarian crisis in that country.<\/p>\n

While Cameron and Obama talk about \u00absignificant costs\u00bb to be sanctioned against Russia for troop movements in Crimea \u2013 during which not a single shot was fired nor has anyone been injured \u2013 both British and American leaders continue to have evaded prosecution for illegal wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq where more than one million people have died and millions more wounded and displaced. <\/p>\n

But the star political performer among the Western hypocrites was American Secretary of State John Kerry. His botox treatment may limit facial movements, but Kerry\u2019s rhetoric made up for that in playing to the gallery. He denounced to US media what he called \u00abincredible, brazen aggression\u00bb by Russia towards Ukraine. <\/p>\n

\u00abYou just don\u2019t invade another country on phoney pretext in order to assert your interests\u00bb, said Kerry. \u00abThis is an act of aggression that is completely trumped up in terms of its pretext. It\u2019s really 19th century behaviour in the 21st century\u00bb.<\/p>\n

These words come from the top diplomat of a country that has used countless phoney pretexts \u2013 from weapons of mass destruction to humanitarian protection \u2013 to subvert and invade other sovereign states, inflicting millions of deaths; not just in the distant past but right now in the present with regard to covert operations and sanctions in Syria, Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, among other places. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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Ukraine: The Dangers of Dealing with Delusional Western Leaders Finian CUNNINGHAM – 04 March, 2014 – The Strategic Culture Foundation Fittingly, given the coincidence of the US cinema Oscars ceremony held at the weekend, American politicians and their Western allies were also starring in bravura performances of hypocrisy and double think with regard to their more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19980"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19981,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19980\/revisions\/19981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}