May 18, 2014
UN Ukraine report shows double standards in attempt to whitewash Kiev's actions - Russia
by Lil Joe Johnson
What the fuck did the Russian government expect? The UN presents itself as an 'international community' of 'free and equal' nations; but, as Orwell noted, "some are more equal than others". This is true in each nation: its respective country is owned by the classes in possession of the nation's productive forces, thus even in bourgeois democracy the economically dominate class dominate its politics. Still, the finance capitalists and industrial millionaires the same as propertyless workers are each permitted but one vote.
Just the same national governments are political lackeys of the most powerful, politically dominate class. The nation's ruling classes work together to determine politics in every nation-state - 'democratic' or otherwise. Political State's representatives of each nation's ruling classes select from its ranks an individual to promote its 'national' interests at the UN. This is the same with Russia, as well as the United States, Britain and France.
The UN has from the very beginning been an instrument of U.S and European imperialisms geopolitical domination. It is not an accident that a political representative from U.S. militarily occupied 'South' Korea [rather than from politically independent 'North' Korea] has been selected [to serve the interests of U.S. imperialism] as the General Secretary of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
The relatively powerless General Assembly operates on a democratic basis: one vote per nation. The nations however are not free and equal, but each one is distinguished by the level of development of its productive forces - its technological development and corresponding economic and political power. Haiti and France each has one vote. Jamaica and the United Kingdom has one vote each. Similarly the United States and Granada has each a single vote. Haiti, Jamaica and Granada each are however permanently excluded from permanent seats on the all powerful U.N. Security Council.
It is not an accident that the UN Atomic commission is sanctioning North Korea and Iran, rather than Israel, for having nuclear capacity. 'Human rights' is nothing but an ideological term, which has no empirical existence - never has. It is used by US imperialism and the UN to denounce governments against which US imperialism and NATO are at odds. They used the cover of 'defending civilians of Libya' from 'Gaddafi killing his own people', but support the fascist junta regime in Kiev's killing its own people.
The United Nations is as in the case of its predecessor, the short lived League of Nations, a product of World War - WWI and WWII. To the victor goes the spoils. The League of Nations was rightly characterised by Lenin 'a den of thieves'. So is the United Nations. Some thieves are more powerful than others.
Permanent Members of the dominating body of the UN, Security Council of the United Nations is comprised of those countries that defeated the axis powers - the so-called Allies: France, Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, China. In the case of China it was initially the renegade U.S. lackey regime Taiwan. Taiwan was displaced by the People's Republic of China. Germany, Italy and Japan were/are excluded from the UN's security Council. The post-collapse of the Soviet Union was displaced by Russia.
The United States, the United Kingdom, France - the great imperialist powers - th People's Republic of China and Russia are each, nuclear powers. Upon the collapse of the Union of Soviet Republics Russia appropriated the nuclear weapons that were placed in Ukraine.
Every nation's foreign policy is based upon force. The United States, Britain and France, which also operate through the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation - NATO - which both exclude the Soviet Union/Russia and operate against it - had no choice in the matter, Ukraine therefore had no choice but to yield to the appropriation by Russia of the nuclear arsenal on its territory (similarly the Union of South Africa had no choice but to yield its nuclear weapons/program as a precondition for the ascendancy of ANC to displace the Apartheid regime.
Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea also manufacture and possess nuclear weapons, arsenals. These however are exceptions that prove rather than refute my argument. These nuclear nations are not Permanent Members on the UN Security Council, yet they are protected as such by Permanent Members. Israel, Pakistan and India are militarily suzerainities of US imperialism. North Korea is directly defended by China and indirectly by Russia. These relationships are based in the Korean War, wherein China directly and the Soviet Union indirectly supported Korea against US/UN invasion and occupation of its Southern region's expansion North.
Of recent decades China and Russia have respectively adopted foreign policy of Chamberlain like appeasement of US or/and NATO: appeasement of submitting to US/NATO vicious policy of imperialist's aggression in South and Western Asia, North and East Africa, Central and East Europe viz. vis-avis: Palestine, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Serbia, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Hungary ... In this historical context it is not inconsistent that US imperialism, through UN Security Council and its sub-departments UNSCOM and Atomic commissions have focused demands of non-proliferation on Korea, Iraq, and now Iran, demanding they cease nuclear science by force of threats and economic sanctions against the peoples of those countries.
U.S. imperialism has used for political cover and ideological justification the slogan 'human rights' to go to war against North Korea and Afghanistan and a so-called 'coalition of the willing' to invade and occupy Iraq - that being made possible after a decade of UN endorsed sanctions and UNSCOM attacks. It has used NATO expansion to capture former Warsaw Pact countries and even countries of the former Soviet Union. So, how is it the present Russian government and media are 'surprised' that the UN's so-called report on violence in Ukraine "shows double standards in attempt to whitewash Kiev's actions"?
US imperialism/ NATO has politically and militarily affiliated the Kiev coup and support this fascist government's violence in East Ukraine. It shouldn't've come as a surprise to the Russian government that the UN, as it is dominated by U.S. imperialism/NATO, would ally itself with fascists in Ukraine. The UN will, unless stopped by China and Russia, recognise the fascist coup government to be 'legitimate' and denounce as 'illegal'/ 'illegitimate' the independence of Crimea and other self-declared republics of South and East Ukraine. The UN serve the interests of US imperialism and NATO. It was ridiculously stupid of the Russian government leaders to have so long labour under the illusion that once the Soviet State was overthrown and privatised capitalism displaced state ownership that the new capitalist's government would be well received by US imperialism and NATO as friends or allies.
Today US/NATO expansion into the former Soviet Union's republics are bringing the world to the brink of global thermonuclear war, global destruction. So long as workers remain submissive to bourgeois class domination and control of governments this danger is upon us. So long as capitalist commodity production dominate the global economy there will be economic competition between the nation's capitalists and wars between capitalist dominated nation-states. Not until after this mode of production and corresponding mode of appropriation is destroyed by working class revolutionary expropriation of productive forces and its displacement of bourgeois political power and destruction of all bourgeois nation-States and national borders will there be peace on earth.
The only international community that would represent the world's vast working classes and toiling masses of each nation would be a revolutionary Worker's International. In each country the working class must win the battle of democracy - acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must expropriate the nations productive forces by transferring the means of production and distribution from the private possession of the capitalist classes to the public property with worker's management of the economy. The working class must constitute itself the nation.
Hic Rhodus, hic saltus.
Once capitalist commodity production and wage labour are done away with competition within and between nations will be done with as well, thus achieving the precondition for the whithering away of the State and with the elimination of nation-state borders. Then and only then can there be any real international community - nay, without nations there is no longer any need for any hypocritical internationalism or UN with its hypocritical charters and commissions. The capitalist dominated world once overthrown and nation-States abolished the UN &c., will be displaced by a world community of freely associating producers.
Here is the rose, here dance.
Lil Joe
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UN Ukraine report shows double standards in attempt to whitewash Kiev's actions - Russia
Published time: May 16, 2014 09:13
Edited time: May 16, 2014 12:28
Training in hand combat among opposition fighters from the nationalist organization "Right sector" in a camp on Independence Square in Kiev.(RIA Novosti / Andrey Stenin)
Moscow has accused a UN report on violence in Ukraine's Odessa of being purposefully blind to hard facts and simply "carrying out a political order to whitewash" the actions of the coup-appointed government in Kiev.
The Russian foreign ministry believes that the report presented by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is marked by a systematic and routine ignorance of any Kiev involvement in sparking the Odessa carnage, while placing all the blame unequivocally with the pro-Russian self-defense forces. The ministry statement remarks that not a single word was said about neo-Nazi elements who engaged in setting buildings on fire with people inside, shooting dead anyone who opposed them and finishing off the wounded in plain sight.
This especially concerns the events that took place in the House of the Trade Unions on May 2.
The foreign ministry believes that such "double standards" are a clear indicator of the international organization's mission to pander to a select side in the conflict, without any regard for hard evidence.
The United Nations spoke on Friday of the "alarming deterioration" of the human rights situation in eastern Ukraine. The report by the organization's head for human rights, Navi Pillay, focuses on the findings of the Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) in the period since April 2 through to May 6. It speaks of the various rights violations encountered and offers recommendations to the current Ukrainian government, noting also its willingness to cooperate with the monitors. The report tries to underline how Kiev is taking concrete steps to implement the Geneva agreement of April.
Among other things, it also focuses on the problems the Tatar minority currently faces in Crimea - although there's no mention of Kiev blocking the region's freshwater supply - which "violates a whole range of human rights".
Moscow goes on to note that Pillay's monthly report failed to mention certain crucial facts: starting with the arson and the coordinated murders; the inaction by Ukraine's law enforcement, as well as the multiple arrests of individuals rallying for federalization; the multiple kidnappings and instances of torture, as well as lack of any credible evidence to back up those actions. In this interpretation, "the entire story is basically being delivered as Kiev's official line would have been."
The foreign ministry found it peculiar that "in some 30 pages of text, there is not one mention of any manifestation of aggressive nationalism and neo-Nazism in Ukraine."
Russia criticized the authors of the report for violating the principles enshrined in the UN Charter, which clearly dictates that political neutrality must be exhibited whatever the situation. "When the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights pronounced the Crimea referendum as 'illegal' following the suit of Kiev and its Western patrons, it seconded that it accepts a nation's right to self-determination established by international human rights laws only when it is politically favorable," said the statement.
The icing on the cake, in Moscow's view, could be seen in the venue where the UN findings were presented - and by whom: in Kiev, by the UN secretary-general's assistant, Ivan Shimonovich, who has a"reputation for a lack of objectivity, making sweeping judgments" and "unsubstantiated claims."
Shimonovich's role in the presentation is seen as "an unambiguous indication" of the OHCHR's bias and lack of independence and objectivity.
http://rt.com/news/159388-un-report-ukraine-criticism/
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