EUROPE'S FRAGMENTED FUTURE

The specter of secession is haunting Europe. Since 2000 there have been three successful separations from existing states — by Montenegro, Kosovo and Crimea — and at the moment, several other regions are attempting to secede and create independent states. In March, Crimea first seceded from Ukraine and then voted, in a referendum, to rejoin the Russian Federation. At the same time, in an informal online referendum, voters of the Veneto region in northern Italy overwhelmingly favored independence and the restoration of the old Venetian republic. In September, the citizens of Scotland will vote in an independence referendum, and the government of the Spanish region of Catalonia plans to hold a referendum of the same kind two months later — despite a ruling by the Constitutional Court of Spain that such a referendum would be illegal (a similar referendum in the Basque region in 2008 was thwarted by the Spanish government). 

Why Now?

Why are these referendums all taking place in 2014? In fact, the Scottish and Catalan votes were planned several years ago, at a time when dissatisfaction with the “host states” among the citizens of these regions was the highest. Spain and Italy were experiencing a series of banking and fiscal crises and increasing unemployment; the Conservative government in the U.K., which had no electoral support at all in Scotland, was introducing unpopular austerity measures. It was only when repeated attempts to get the Veneto regional assembly to hold an independence referendum stalled that the Veneto secessionists proceeded on their own with the online referendum — and made it coincide with the Crimean one.  

The point of these referendums is to mobilize the dissatisfaction of those who strongly self-identify as Scots, Catalan or Venetian and who regard their current “host state” as foreign, burdensome, incompetent or corrupt. By leaving this state, literally, and creating another, better state, the secessionists hope to improve their lot in life. In contrast to these movements, the Crimean referendum was conceived and conducted within a few weeks: It was a response to the violent overthrow of the Ukrainian president, a popular figure in Crimea, and was used to channel the consequent fears among the majority Russian speakers into a vote to rejoin Russia as a safe haven from the new, (allegedly) hostile, anti-Russian Ukrainian government. The referendum was rushed, with the Russian military lurking in the background, before the new Ukrainian government was able to dispel voters’ fears or establish control over the autonomous republic. Within weeks after the region rejoined Russia, the pay of public employees and pensions in Crimea almost doubled; the reunification thus brought more benefits to some Crimeans than a mere secession from Ukraine would have. 

No Easy Way Out

Seceding from a country isn’t always as fast and (relatively) painless as Crimea made it seem. But there are other cases of secession that suggest these pains can be eased somewhat. First, the best strategy for any secessionists is to attempt to convince their host state that the secession of their territory won’t cause much harm. The potential secession of Scotland does not appear to be harmful to the U.K., so the U.K. government is prepared to recognize its independence. The secession of Montenegro in 2006, which the EU supported and supervised, did not appear to harm Serbia either; the Serbian government agreed to the secession of this federal unit.

If this tactic fails, a secessionist movement should try to find a powerful sponsor – a superpower, such as the U.S., or a neighbor more powerful than its host state (and not easily intimidated by a superpower), such as Russia. The Albanian secessionists in Kosovo gained U.S. sponsorship in 1998, when they led a large armed uprising against Serbia. And in 2008, when Kosovo, then a province of Serbia under U.N./NATO administration, formally seceded from Serbia in spite of Serbia’s vehement opposition, the U.S., Kosovo’s principal sponsor, along with most EU member states immediately recognized its independence. It is notable that Spain, Slovakia, Romania, Greece and Cyprus refused to recognize, on principle, a state, such as Kosovo, that unilaterally seceded against the opposition of its “host state”; not coincidentally, all these EU member states oppose separatist movements within their own borders.

This doesn’t lend much hope to the Catalan, Basque and Venetian secessionists — their host states oppose their aspirations, and they are not likely to gain powerful sponsors. Secessionists all over the globe face similar obstacles: Those in Tibet and Xinjiang (in China), the Caucasus (in Russia), Congo, Kurdistan (in Iraq) or Azawad (in Mali) — to mention, randomly, only a small selection of cases — have little chance of carving out an independent, internationally recognized state, however strong their movements may be. Quebec at least has the law on its side: If its secessionists ever succeed in winning over the majority of their province’s population, they may legally secede from Canada, thanks to a 1998 Canadian Supreme Court opinion. 

For secessionists, the state they currently live in is effectively foreign. 

The differences between secessionists in Europe and Quebec, on the one hand, and those elsewhere are quite obvious. Outside Europe and Quebec, the secessionists often face either a failing or a highly repressive state. Faced with the pervasive threat of violence, they aim to create a state structure that will protect the lives of its inhabitants. In some cases, such as that of Somaliland (in Somalia) or Kurdistan (in Iraq), they succeed in creating a separate, protective state that has, however, no international recognition as an independent state. In many others, they fail and are plunged into a cycle of violent civil conflict.

Secessionists in Europe and Quebec, by contrast, aren’t facing threats of violence; thus their aim is not protection but provision of perceived benefits. They claim that an independent state would advantage their constituents in all aspects of their lives much more than the current host state could; this includes a better standard of living. For them, independence serves to provide a variety of enhanced benefits to a group of people inhabiting a region within an existing state.

Many supporters of secession find it oppressive to live in a state whose rulers speak a language or dialect they consider foreign. State or cultural symbols (flags, anthems, coats of arms, popular songs) are to them also foreign: For them, the state they currently live in is effectively foreign. But these people are in the minority. As the opinion polls in Scotland, Quebec, Veneto and Catalonia suggest, identity secessionists do not form clear majorities in these regions, so would-be voters need to be convinced that independence would benefit them.

That’s not easy: In Quebec’s past two referendums, in 1981 and 1995, the veteran secessionist Parti Québécois failed to achieve even simple majorities to support independence. Pre-referendum opinion polls in Scotland, Catalonia andVeneto, while showing that the majority of voters in these regions are highly dissatisfied with the host state or central government, do not unequivocally show that the same majority would vote for independence.

Questionable Benefits

Who would benefit most from the secession of Scotland, Catalonia, Veneto or Quebec? The answer is simple: The beneficiaries would first and foremost be the leaders of secessionist parties whose aim is to take over the governments of the newly independent states. If they were rulers of independent and sovereign states, their policies and actions — including the use of coercion and force — as well as their remuneration would not be subject to any higher or “foreign” sovereign authority or oversight. In addition, as the new state takes over the functions of the old — including those of diplomacy — there would be lots of new job opportunities in the expanding state bureaucracy. Local small and medium businesses would profit, too, as their competitors from outside the region withdraw across new state borders.

It’s less clear how other citizens of the new states would fare. As many nonlocal or even local companies pull out of the region (as they did prior to the Quebec referendum in 1995), employment is likely to become a pressing issue. Perhaps an economic downturn may be avoided if the seceded state remains in a regional economic organization (such as the EU) of which its former host state is a member. But this, too, remains uncertain: The EU, for example, has no policies about, or obligation toward, states seceding from an EU member.

For most people in these regions of Europe — unlike those in Crimea — seceding now would bring uncertainty and anxiety about the future that secessionist leaders would not be able to allay. For this reason alone it is highly uncertain whether the planned referendums will produce majorities in favor of independence — and, even if they do, whether these regions will become independent states, or be recognized as such, anytime soon. 

Aleksandar Pavković is an associate professor of politics and international relations at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He is the author of “Creating New States” (2007) and an editor of “The Ashgate Research Companion to Secession” (2011) and of “Separatism and Secessionism in Europe and Asia” (2013). 

Seven Decades Of Nazi Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret

Yaroslav Stetsko, an OUN leader during World War II, meets George H.W. Bush.

An interview with Russ Bellant, author of “Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party.”

As the Ukrainian crisis has unfolded over the past few weeks, it’s hard for Americans not to see Vladimir Putin as the big villain. But the history of the region is a history of competing villains vying against one another; and one school of villains—the Nazis—have a long history of engagement with the US, mostly below the radar, but occasionally exposed, as they were by Russ Bellant in his book Old Nazis, The New Right And The Republican Party(South End Press, 1991). Bellant’s exposure of Nazi leaders from German allies in the 1988 Bush presidential campaign was the driving force in the announced resignation of nine individuals, two of them from the Ukraine, which is why he was the logical choice to turn to illuminate the scattered mentions of Nazi and fascist elements amongst the Ukrainian nationalists, which somehow never seems to warrant further comment or explanation. Of course most Ukranians aren’t Nazis or fascists—all the more reason to illuminate those who would hide their true natures in the shadows…or even behind the momentary glare of the spotlight.

Your book, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party exposed the deep involvement in the Republican Party of Nazi elements from Central and Eastern Europe, including Ukrainian, dating back to World War II and even before. As the Ukrainian crisis unfolded in the last few weeks there have been scattered mentions of a fascist or neo-fascist element, but somehow that never seems to warrant further comment or explanation. I can’t think of anyone better to shed light on what’s not being said about that element. The danger of Russian belligerence is increasingly obvious, but this unexamined fascist element poses dangers of its own. What can you tell us about this element and those dangers?

The element has a long history, of a long record that speaks for itself, when that record is actually known and elaborated on. The key organization in the coup that took place here recently was the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists [OUN], or a specific branch of it known as the Banderas [OUN-B]. They’re the group behind the Svoboda party, which got a number of key positions in the new interim regime. The OUN goes back to the 1920s, when they split off from other groups, and, especially in the 1930s began a campaign of assassinating and otherwise terrorizing people who didn’t agree with them.

As World War II approached, they made an alliance with the Nazi powers, they formed several military formations, so that when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, they had several battalions that went into the main city at the time, where their base was, Lvov, or Lwow, it has a variety of spellings [also 'Lviv']. They went in, and there’s a documented history of them participating in the identification and rounding up Jews in that city, and assisting in executing several thousand citizens almost immediately. There were also involved in liquidating Polish group populations in other parts of Ukraine during the war.

Without getting deeply involved in that whole history, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists to this day defend their wartime role, they were backers of forming the 14th Waffen SS Division, which was the all-Ukrainian division that became an armed element on behalf of the Germans, and under overall German control. They helped encourage its formation, and after the war, right at the end of the war, it was called the First Ukrainian division and they still glorify that history of that SS division, and they have a veterans organization, that obviously doesn’t have too many of members left but they formed a veterans division of that.

If you look insignia being worn in Kiev in the street demonstrations and marches to the SS division insignia still being worn. In fact I was looking at photographs last night of it and there was a whole formation marching, not with 14th Division, but with the Second Division, it was a large division that did major battle around the Ukraine, and these marchers were wearing the insignia on the armbands of the Second Division.

So this is a very clear record, and the OUN, even in its postwar publications has called for ethno-genetically pure Ukrainian territory, which of course is simply calling for purging Jews, and Poles, and Russians from what they consider Ukrainian territory. Also, current leaders of Svoboda have made blatantly anti-Semitic remarks that call for getting rid of Muscovite Jews and so forth. They use this very coarse threatening language that anybody knowing the history of World War II would tremble at. If they were living here, it would seem like they would start worrying about it.

Obviously these people don’t hold monopoly power in Ukraine, but they stepped up and the United States has been behind the Svoboda party and these Ukrainian nationalists. In fact the US connections to them go back to World War II and the United States has had a long-standing tie to the OUN, through the intelligence agencies, initially military intelligence, and later the CIA.

Your book discusses a central figure in the OUN, Yaroslav Stetsko, who was politically active for decades here in America. What can you tell us about his history?

Yaroslav Stetsko was the number two leader of the OUN during World War II and thereafter. In 1959, Stefan Bandera, who was head of the OUN, was killed and that’s when Stetsko assumed the leadership. Stetsko in 1941 was the guy who actually marched into Lvov with the German army June 30, 1941 and the OUN issued a proclamation at that time under his name praising and calling for glory to the German leader Adolf Hitler and how they’re going to march arm in arm for the Ukraine and so forth. After the war, he was part of the key leadership that got picked up by the Americans.

There’s a number of accounts I’ve seen, at least three credible up reports, on how they were in the displaced person camp, the Allied forces set up displaced persons camp and picked up tens of thousands of these former allies of Hitler from countries all over the East, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania – there weren’t Polish collaborators I think most people know the Germans heavily persecuted and murdered millions of Polish residents – but Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, and so forth, Belorussia. They had them in these camps they built and organized them, where the Ukrainians were assassinating their Ukrainian nationalist rival so that they would be the undisputed leaders of Ukrainian nationalist movement, so they would get the sponsorship of the United States to continue their political operation, and they were successful in that regard. So when Bandera was out of the picture, Stetsko became the undisputed leader of Ukrainian nationalists.

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in 1943 under German sponsorship organized a multinational force to fight on behalf of the retreating German army. After the battle of Stalingrad in ’43 the Germans felt a heightened need to get more allies, and so the Romanian Iron Guard, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and others with military formations in place to assist came together and formed the united front called the Committee of Subjugated Nations and again worked on behalf of of the German military. In 1946, they renamed it the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, ABN. Stetsko was the leader of that until he died in 1986.

I mention this in part because the OUN tries to say well during the war we fought the Germans and the communists. The fact of the matter is that they were the leadership of this whole multinational alliance on behalf of the German the last two years of the war and in the war thereafter. All the postwar leaders of the unrepentant Nazi allies were all under the leadership of Yaroslav Stetsko.

What happened when Stetsko, and others like him from other German allied forces came to the United States?

In the United States, when they came, his groups organized ‘captive nations’ committees, they became, supposedly, the representatives of people who are being oppressed in Eastern Europe, the Baltic countries, by the Soviet. But they were, in fact, being given an uncritical blank check to represent the voices of all these nations that were part of the Warsaw Pact when in fact they represented the most extreme elements of each of the national communities.

The Captive Nations Committee in Washington DC for instance was run by the person who headed the Ukrainian organization of nationalists, that was true in a number of places. In my hometown area near Detroit as well, they played a major role. In the early 50s, when they were resettled in the United States, there was at least 10,000 of them that were resettled, when you look at all the nationalities. They became politically active through the Republican national committee, because it was really the Eisenhower administration that made the policy decision in the early 1950s, and brought them in. They set up these campaign organizations, every four years they would mobilize for the Republican candidate, whoever it would be, and some of them like Richard Nixon, in 1960, actually had close direct ties to some of the leaders like the Romanian Iron Guard, and some of these other groups.

When Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968, he made a promise to these leaders that they would if he won the presidency he would make them the ethnic outreach arm of the Republican National Committee on a permanent basis, so they wouldn’t be a quadrennial presence, but a continuing presence in the Republican Party. And he made that promise through a guy named Laszlo Pasztor, who served five years in prison after World War II for crimes against humanity. He was prosecuted in 1946 by non-Communist government that actually had control of Hungary at the time. There was a period from ’45 to ’48 when the Hungarian Communist Party didn’t run Hungary. They were the ones who prosecuted him. He had served as a liaison between the Hungarian Nazi party and Berlin; he served in the Berlin embassy of the Hungarian Arrow Cross movement. This is the guy that got picked to organize all the ethnic groups, and the only people that got brought in were the Nazi collaborators.

They didn’t have a Russian affiliate because they hated all Russians of all political stripes. There were no African Americans or Jewish affiliates either. It was just composed of these elements, and for a while they had a German affiliate but some exposure of the Nazi character of the German affiliate caused it to be quietly removed, but other [Nazi] elements were retained.

Your book was researched and published in the 1980s. What was happening by that point in time, after these groups had been established for more than a decade?

I went to their meetings in the 1980s, and they put out material that really make clear who they were there 1984, one of their 1984 booklets praised the pro-Nazi Ustashi regime in Croatia, and these Ustashi killed an estimated 750,000 people and burned them alive in their own camp in Croatia. And here they are praising the founding of this regime, and acknowledging that it was associated with the Nazis, and it was signed by the chairman of the Republican National Committee. You couldn’t make this stuff up. It was just crazy.

I interviewed the Kossack guy, he showed me his pension from service in the SS in World War II, and how he was affiliated with free Nazi groups in the United States, and he was just very unrepentant. These are the umbrellas that were called ‘Captive Nations Committees’ by these people that Stetsko was over, and was part of, too. The Reagan White House brought him in, and promoted him as a major leader and did a big dinner—[UN Ambassador] Jeane Kirkpatrick was part of it, George Bush as Vice President, of course Reagan—and Stetsko was held up as a great leader., And proclamations were issued on his behalf.

When Bush was running for president in 1988, Bush Senior, he came to these basically one of the leading locations of the Ukrainian nationalists in North America, which is in just outside of Detroit, a suburb of Detroit to their cultural center, and one of their foremost leaders in the world is headquartered out of their, at the time, he got Bush to come there and they denounced the OSI and Bush just shook his head, he wouldn’t say anything about it.

The OSI was the Offices of Special Investigations, it was investigating the presence of Nazi war criminals in the United States, and deporting those that were found to have lied on their history when they applied to come into the United States after the war. They had deported a number of people from all over the United States. They had a lot of open investigations, and all these émigré Nazis were trying to bring all the political pressure they could to stop these investigations, including the Ukrainian nationalists ones.

So they denounced them, the OSI investigations, in front of Bush, Bush nodded his head, but he wouldn’t say anything because he didn’t want to sound like he was sympathetic to the Nazi war criminals, but at the same time he didn’t want to offend his hosts by disputing the issue with them. So, the issue of World War II was still being played out over four decades later, in the politics of the presidency, and unfortunately Bush and Reagan continued to be on the side that we tried to defeat in World War II.

What was the response when your book came out, with all this information? How was the information received, and what was the political reaction?

Prior to the book’s publication, Washington Jewish Week had done a story about some of the ethnic leaders of the Bush campaign and their history, like denying the Holocaust, or being involved with these émigré Nazi groups. They named a couple of them that weren’t part of the Heritage Groups Council, but they were part of the Bush campaign.

Then when I published the book, it brought out a lot more names, and the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Boston Globe did stories on them. It got to the point where when reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer would call them about one of their ethnic leaders of the Bush campaign the standard response was he’s no longer part of the campaign, and they’d say that almost as soon as the name would get mentioned. So that they would call that person, and I’ll give the example of Florian Galdau, he was, he ran the Rumanian Iron Guard in New York City. He had wartime record. [Romanian Archbishop Valerian] Trifa himself was implicated in the mass killing of Jews in Bucharest in 1941, I believe. Galdau’s record is clear, because when Trifa was prosecuted he was one of the people targeted by the Office of Special Investigations, and he was forced into deportation in the 1980s, but in those records, they identify Florian Galdau is one of his operatives, so his history is known, except apparently to the Bush campaign.

So when he was identified by the Philadelphia Inquirer, they immediately said he wasn’t part of it, so the Philadelphia Inquirer called Florian Galdau, and he said, “No, I’m part of it. They never said anything to me. As far as I know I’m still part of the campaign.” And that was the pattern.

The Republican National Committee said after the election that they were going to put a blue ribbon committee together and do an investigation of the charges in my book. I was never contacted, nobody affiliated with the book project, the publisher wasn’t contacted none, none of the sources I worked with was contacted. And after about a year, with nobody raising any issues or questions about it they just folded it up and they said well we have not had the resources to investigate this matter.

I did publish an op-ed in the New York Times about two weeks after the election was over, and I think that was the last time anybody said anything publicly about it that got any kind of forum. I think they were allowed to just die and wither away, that is those leaders. The Republican idea was probably to bring in another generation of people who were born in the United States as these émigré’s died off, but they never did anything about this history that Richard Nixon had bequeathed them with. The Reagan White House had really made deep political commitments and alliances with them, they didn’t want to look like they turned their back on them; and Bush wanted them for his reelection campaign, so he wasn’t going to turn his back on them either.

If you want an anecdote, I know that 60 Minutes was working on a piece that Bradley’s team was working on, and Nancy Reagan herself called the executive producer and said that we would really like it if you would wouldn’t do this story, and they killed it. Because, basically, it’s not just about Nazis and the Republican national committee were Nazis in the White House, it inevitably raises the question of who are they how did they get here, who sponsored them and it goes back to the intelligence agencies at that point. And some people don’t like treading there, if it’s tied to an intelligence agency, they prefer to just stay away from the subject. So, some people at 60 Minutes were frustrated by it, but that’s what happened. I think that they were able to effectively kill the story when people tried to cover it. They were able to persuade news managers to not delve into it too much.

What’s happened since you wrote your book, and most of the World War II generation died off? What have the OUN and its allies been up to since then that we should be aware of?

Once the OUN got sponsored by the American security establishment intelligence agencies, they were embedded in a variety of ways in Europe as well, like Radio Free Europe which is headquartered in Munich. A lot of these groups, in the ABN were headquartered in Munich under the sponsorship of Radio Free Europe. From there they ran various kinds of operations where they were trying to do work inside the Warsaw Pact countries. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a number of them moved back into the Ukraine as well as the other respective countries, and began setting up operations there, and organizing political parties. They reconstituted the veterans group of the Waffen SS, they held marches in the 1990s in the Ukraine, and organized political parties, in alliance with the United States, and became part of what was called the Orange Revolution in 2004, when they won the election there.

The prime minister was closely allied with them. They worked with the new government to get veterans benefits for the Ukrainian SS division veterans, and they started establishing the statues and memorials and museums for Stepan Bandera, who was the leader of the OUN, and who I should say was despised by other Ukrainian nationalists because of their methods, because they were extreme and violent toward other rival Ukrainian nationalist groups as well. So Bandera wasn’t a universal hero, but this group was so influential, in part because of its US connections, that if you go online and you Google ‘Lviv’ and the word ‘Bandera’ you’ll see monuments and statues and large posters and banners of Bandera’s likeness and large monuments permanent erected monuments on behalf of Bandera so they made this guy like he’s the George Washington of the Ukraine.

That government was in power until 2010, when there was another election, and a new regime was elected with a lot of support from the East. Ukrainian nationalist groupings around the Orange Revolution were sharply divided against each other, and there was rampant corruption, and people voted them out. The United States was very aggressive in trying to keep the nationalists in power, but they lost the election. The United States was spending money through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was pumping money into various Ukrainian organizations, and they were doing the same thing in Russia and many other countries around the world as well. We’re talking about many millions of dollars a year to affect the politics of these countries.

When the occupations came in Independence Square in Kiev late last year, you can see Svoboda’s supporters and you can hear their leaders in the parliament making blatant anti-semitic remarks. The leader of the Svoboda party went to Germany to protest the prosecution of John Demjanjuk, who was the Ukrainian who was settled in the United States, who was implicated as a concentration camp guard in the killing of innocent people. The German courts found him guilty and Svoboda leadership went to Germany to complain about convicting this guy. The reason they said they didn’t want any Ukrainian tainted with it because they live a lie that no Ukrainian had anything to do with the German Nazi regime, when history betrays them, and their own affiliations betray them. But they don’t like that being out there publicly, so they always protest their innocence of any Ukrainian being charged with anything, regardless of what the evidence is.

Your book was an important revelation but was not alone. Your book notes that Jack Anderson reported on the pro-Nazi backgrounds of some of the ethnic advisors as far back as 1971, yet when your report came out almost two decades later, everyone responded with shock, surprise, and even denial. What lessons should we draw from this history of buried history? And how should it influence our thinking about the unfolding crisis in the Ukraine?

I don’t believe it’s ever too late to become familiarized and educated about the history of this phenomenon both the wartime history and our postwar collaboration with these folks. There were a number of exposés written about the émigré Nazis. There was a 1979 book called Wanted and it did a number of case stories of these people being brought in to the United States, including the Trifa story. Christopher Simpson did a book called Blowbackthat discussed the policy decisions, it’s an incredible book. He’s a professor at American University and he did years of research through the Freedom of Information Act and archives, and got the policy documents under which the decisions were made to bring these folks together, and not just into the United States but to deploy them around the world.

Like my book, it didn’t get the attention it deserved. The New York Times book reviewer was negative toward the book. There are people that really don’t want to touch this stuff. There’s a lot of people who don’t want it touched. I think it’s really important for people who believe in openness and transparency and democratic values, who don’t want to see hate groups come back to power in other parts of the world to know what happened.

There’s not very many Americans that really even know that the Waffen SS was a multinational force. That’s been kind of kept out of the received history. Otherwise people would know that there were Ukrainian Nazis, Hungarian Nazis, Latvian Nazis, and they were all involved in the mass murder of their fellow citizens, if they were Jewish, or even if they were co-nationalists that were on the other side of the issue of the war. They were just mass murderers, across Eastern Europe. And that history, those facts aren’t even well-known. A lot of people didn’t even know this phenomenon even existed.

I think all Americans have a responsibility to know what their government is doing in the foreign policy in Europe as well as elsewhere around the world, as well as Latin America as well as Africa. Since our policy was to uphold apartheid in South Africa why weren’t Americans challenging that more? They began challenging that in the 80s, but the apartheid regime was run by the Nazi party. They were allied with Germany in World War II, they were the Nationalist party and they took power in 1948 and the United States backed that for decades. We backed the death squads in Latin America, even though they massacred tens of thousands of people – 30,000 people in Chile alone. Americans aren’t being attentive to what their government is doing abroad, even though it’s been doing done with their tax dollars and in their name, and I think we just have a general responsibility.

I went to these meetings, I went to these conferences, I went over a period of years. I met with them directly, most of the people I wrote about, I met with them personally or in group meetings. People can’t afford to do that on their own, timewise, but there’s enough literature out there they can read and pursue it, they will get enough enough of a handle to get what the real picture is, to demand change. I’m not totally partisan in this, but I think the Republican Party was extreme on this, but the Democrats folded and didn’t challenge this when they knew it was going on.

There is an old Roman poet that once said truth does not say one thing and wisdom another. I’m a believer in that. Tell the truth and wisdom will follow.

Paul H. Rosenberg is a columnist for Al Jazeera English and Senior Editor for Random Lengths News. 

Western Hypocrisy: Crimea and Israeli War Crimes

The West Hits Russia With Sanctions For Annexing Crimea, But It Has Yet To Punish Israel For War Crimes In Palestine.

The velocity with which the US and EU imposed economic sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea is equal to the mass of hypocrisy on Israel's creeping annexation of Palestinian land through colonial-settlement expansion. The ongoing expansion is seen as a war crime "falling into the provision of Article 8 of the International Criminal Court statutes".

Following the overwhelming vote by Crimeans to secede from the Ukraine and join Russia in the rushed referendum on March 16, US President Barack Obama, on March 20, ordered a second round of soft sanctions targeting a list of key Russian officials, businessmen and bankers, sending ripples of instability through Russia's stock market. 

Israel's Illegal Annexations

When in 1947, the UN grappled with the idea of partitioning Palestine, it was rejected, outright and rightfully, by the Palestinians. Nor were the entire inhabitants under the British mandate granted a referendum, as were the Crimeans, on the matter because the indigenous population far exceeded the  Zionist immigrants whom the international community favoured.

So when Israel - unilaterally -  declared the state of Israel, after massacring unarmed Palestinian children, women, elderly and men, destroying over 500 villages and forcefully deporting 700,000 terrified Palestinians, the West did not impose economic sanctions nor lift a military finger to redress the grave violations of international law then.

Furthermore, the West ignored Israel's unilateral annexation, on June 28,1967, of East Jerusalem, including the Old City, that placed its Palestinian residents under Israeli jurisdiction, administration and illegal military occupation as well as ignoring Israel's annexation of Syria's Golan Heights.

Both annexations have been deemed invalid by many UNSC Resolutions such as 478, 269 and 497 - all rejected by Israel that, 47 years later, relentlessly fuels its annexation drive by the expansion of its settlement colonies.

On March 20, while the Ukrainian crisis unfolded, the Israeli Civil Administration, with Putinesque arrogance, defied the Israeli-Palestinian peace process demand for a settlement freeze, by announcing the approval of more than 2,000 housing units in the illegal West Bank settlements.

Today, there are 121 colonies plus 101 offshoot outposts subsidised by the government of Israel and supported by monies from Jews worldwide through rich Zionist organisations like the apartheid JNF"charity" whose provision of illegal settlement housing and leases on stolen Palestinian lands are "chartered to benefit Jews exclusively". Moreover, JNF's racist policies and illegal operations are tax-exempt in the US, UK, Australia and Canada.  

Almost half a million illegal colonists reside in the encroaching settlements. They have the right to bear arms and enjoy the impunity to act as government militia under the protection of the Israeli Occupation Forces. Systematic settler oppression includes torching fields, uprooting thousands of fruit and olive trees, damaging property, arson, poisoning sheep, defacing graves and mosques, illegal squatting, water and farmland contamination by diversion of sewerage, throwing sewerage on Palestinian passer-bys, road blocks, attacks on schoolchildren and school buses, intimidations,  beatings, shootings, deliberate hit and run, vile verbal abuse, racist and threatening graffiti.

Judaisation Plans

Over the recent months of peace talks, provocative assaults by settler and military activity against the al-Aqsa mosque has heightened fears of Zionist desecration and judaisation of  al-Haram al-Sharif, marked for the site of the Jewish Third Temple as demonstrated in the propaganda film featuring Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.

Billions of dollars to fund the Third Temple are set aside and ready to literally blast away the Dome of the Rock and the holy al-Aqsa Mosque which are under daily threats by excavations below and above by the Zionist religious and settler zealots impervious to the inevitable repercussion of a Muslim conflagration.

The judaisation of East Jerusalem is fundamental to Israel’s annexation master plan to unite East and West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The relentless coercion and the dispossession and displacement of Palestinian residents is executed by the Israeli government, the Municipality of Jerusalem and Elad, the right-wing settler organisation through the revocation of residency rights, absentee property laws, discriminatory taxation policies, home demolitions, transfer of Palestinian residents,.

In short -  ethnic cleansing in direct violation of Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: "Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons is prohibited." 

Every day, with every brick laid in the colonial settlements, a war crime is committed as Palestine shrinks before the eyes of the world.The very same eyes that have been indifferent to and complicit with 67 years of the longest brutal occupation in modern history have suddenly flared with indignation for the Russian annexation of the Crimea implemented with the blessing of the Crimean people.  

Israel's overt and furtive annexation of Palestine is also the annexation of Palestinian dignity, rights and  freedoms. However, it is not only the people of Palestine who are injured by the political hypocrisy of Western leaders, all of us are the losers when international law is cynically and deliberately abused and neglected. 

Dr Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters.  She was also a convenor of Australia East Timor Association and coordinator of t he East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.

Why Did Israel Fail To Back US-Supported UN Resolution On Crimea?

The United States often stands virtually alone, save for the company of its colonies like Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, as well as other settler-colonial states like Canada, in opposing UN resolutions critical of Israel.

Israel did not return the favor today by backing a resolution the US feels very strongly about.

The UN General Assembly passed resolution A/68/L.39 condemning Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

on Twitter

UN Gen.Assembly Resolution defending #Ukraine's territorial integrity adopted. 100 for, 11 against, 58 abstentions pic.twitter.com/XqqBu5oslY
— Melissa Kent (@KentUNCBC) March 27, 2014

As the final tally shows, 100 countries voted in favor, 11 against and 58 abstained on the resolution, which was sponsored by Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine.

The United States, predictably, voted in favor, Russia against, and China abstained.
But Israel was a no-show, not voting at all. Perhaps it was because Israeli diplomats are on strike.

That would be a convenient excuse. But surely even the Israeli diplomats’ union would make an exception for a vote that Israel’s strongest backer – the Obama administration – feels is absolutely critical, as these fervent tweets by US ambassador Samantha Power indicate:

on Twitter

Today's UN resolution made it clear: the world won't accept #Russia’s illegal annexation of#Crimea. #UnitedforUkraine
— Samantha Power (@AmbassadorPower) March 27, 2014

on Twitter

#Russia’s actions endanger not just the people of #Ukraine, but the international system as a whole. The U.S. stands #UnitedforUkraine.
— Samantha Power (@AmbassadorPower) March 27, 2014

Uncomfortable Precedent

Perhaps Israel was disturbed by the language of today’s resolution, which “Calls upon all States, international organizations and specialized agencies not to recognize any alteration of the status of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol” and to “refrain from any action or dealing that might be interpreted as recognizing any such altered status.”

Israel, of course, remains in flagrant violation of dozens of similarly worded UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions including Security Council Resolution 465 of 1980, deeming Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem and its settlements on occupied land to be illegal.

That resolution declared that “all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity and that Israel’s policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in those territories constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.”

It also called “upon all States not to provide Israel with any assistance to be used specifically in connexion with settlements in the occupied territories.”

Israel Lying Low

Today’s no-show at the UN is only the latest instance of Israel, a serial annexer of other countries’ lands, trying to evade having to give a position on Crimea.

Earlier this month, a Jewish-Ukrainian MP expressed frustration at Israel’s “silence on Crimea.”

The MP, Oleksandr Feldman, said he was disappointed at what The Times of Israel termed “a rather toothless statement the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem released …. 
reportedly after American pressure.”

Israel expressed “great concern” and urged “diplomacy” but said absolutely nothing supporting the Obama administration’s strident denunciations of Russia’s move.

Israel, apparently, has a enough of a sense of irony not to condemn Russia – and perhaps set a precedent for itself.

The US, by constrast, continues to shamelessly impose sanctions and issue threats regarding Russia’s absorption of Crimea, while at the same time financing and shielding Israel’s continued annexation, occupation and colonization of Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian land.

(By Ali Abunimah )

US A Full Partner In Ukraine Debacle

FROM THE moment the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States has relentlessly pursued a strategy of encircling Russia, just as it has with other perceived enemies like China and Iran. It has brought 12 countries in central Europe, all of them formerly allied with Moscow, into the NATO alliance. US military power is now directly on Russia’s borders.

“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” warned George Kennan, the renowned diplomat and Russia-watcher, as NATO began expanding eastward. “I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely, and it will affect their policies.”

... policy makers in Washington have been congratulating each other for a successful American-aided regime change operation in Ukraine.

Russia is not powerful enough to emerge from the Ukraine/Crimea crisis with a full victory, neither is the United States. Diplomatic pressure and covert action supporting pro-Western factions in Ukraine will continue, but President Obama will not risk military confrontation with Russia. This crisis will not produce the grand westward realignment of which many in Washington dream.

Any solution short of partition will have to take Russia’s interests into account. Thus far the United States has shown no interest in doing that. The likely geopolitical outcome, therefore, is a stalemate.

This crisis is in part the result of a zero-sum calculation that has shaped US policy toward Moscow since the Cold War: Any loss for Russia is an American victory, and anything positive that happens to, for, or in Russia is bad for the United States. This is an approach that intensifies confrontation, rather than soothing it.

(Stephen Kinzer)