McCully Unites Parliament On Ukraine

by Don Franks

On March 4th, New Zealand's Parliament unanimously backed a motion from Foreign Minister Murray McCully expressing "deep concern" at the Russian Federation's "violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity".

He said it was in breach of its international obligations and called for steps to de-escalate tensions including the withdrawal of Russian troops back to base, and the "promotion of dialogue among the affected parties".

As a small country, New Zealand depended "on good institutions and rules to promote constructive international conduct", Mr McCully said. "What has happened in the Crimea in recent days challenges basic concepts of acceptable international behaviour."

Indeed.

Except that our united parliamentarians have forgotten one little detail in their rush to express deep concern.

We have the word of none other than US undersecretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, Victoria Nuland, that Washington lead the charge to twist the internal affairs of Ukraine. Last December Nuland admitted pouring $5 billion since the 1990s into programs aimed at creating pro-Western regime change in the eastern European country.

Nuland herself has made four recent trips to Kiev, meeting and advising opposition figures including the leader of the anti-Semitic and fascistic Svoboda party, Oleh Tyahnybok.

None of this effort was to protect “sovereignty and territorial integrity"
It was a build up to and essential part of the overthrow an elected government to install a pro US regime threatening the stability of Russia’s border.
Such US interference in Europe is not new.

In the former Yugoslavia the US promoted separatist movements in support of secession and wholesale “ethnic cleansing”. Washington’s payoff was the ermegence of new ethnic-based states compliant with US imperialism. A byproduct was the US-NATO wars that saw thousands killed and wounded and hundreds of thousands made homeless.

In this case Washington’s position was simple. Existing states had no right to defend their territorial integrity against US projections. If they tried, the US airforce would bomb them.

This is not to mention US respect for “territorial integrity” of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria over the last few years. There, "acceptable international behaviour", Obama style, has included direct invasion and wholesale massacre of civillians.

Apart from a few qualified quibbles from the Greens, all those war crimes were blinked at or defended by NZ parliamentarians.

The fact that parliament's latest crawling pro US resolution was unanimous says a lot about purportedly progressive parties such as the Greens and MANA.
It also raises a question for Labour's new Chief of staff Matt McCarten
In the past, former MANA supporter Matt McCarten has made forthright statements against the crimes of US imperialism. Now his new Labour party political bosses are saying they'll support McCully's motion, and the government should go on to take further pro US action.

Will Matt now realise what a filthy cesspit he's just wandered into?

Ends

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