Washington inflames ‘new Cold War’ with Russia

On Dec. 4, tens of thousands of people in New York and across the U.S. took to the streets to protest the racist police murder of Eric Garner. But the U.S. House of Representatives was otherwise occupied.

By an overwhelming vote of 411-10, House Republicans and Democrats alike voted “Yes” to an inflammatory resolution threatening war with Russia and supporting the repressive, far-right coup regime in Ukraine.

Although the resolution was symbolic and not attached to any specific legislation, former member of Congress Dennis Kucinich denounced the resolution as the declaration of “a new Cold War” by Washington. (RT.com Dec.5)

Just a week later, on Dec. 11 — while protests against police terror continued nationwide — the millionaires’ club known as the U.S. Senate unanimously passed legislation to impose new sanctions on Russia and increase military aid for Ukraine’s brutal war against the independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics of Novorossiya — including, for the first time officially, “lethal aid.” (Sputnik News, Dec. 12)

That’s right, unanimously — including, that is, supposedly progressive senators like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, both of whom have been previously exposed by the anti-war movement for their support of apartheid Israel.

This more dangerous bill must now pass the House. But after the earlier vote, there is little doubt that it will.

Washington already arming Kiev

Since the U.S.-backed overthrow of Ukraine’s elected president last winter, Washington and Kiev have painted Moscow as the aggressor, despite the fact that it has only acted defensively against the attempted encroachment of NATO to Russia’s western border.

In less than a year’s time, dozens of fictitious claims of “Russian invasions” have been made by U.S. and Ukrainian officials and repeated ad nauseam by the big business media — without a shred of proof.

Publicly, President Barack Obama called on Congress not to approve “lethal aid” for Ukraine, but only so-called nonlethal aid — that is, military equipment that doesn’t include weapons.

However, this is purely for public consumption. In fact, the U.S. has been providing weapons and ammunition all along to the junta of oligarchs, neoliberal politicians and neo-Nazis that seized power in Kiev last February.

Washington has provided these weapons through intermediary NATO puppet regimes, like Poland. And, according to documents published in late November by the hacking group CyberBerkut, the U.S. has been covertly arming Ukraine directly, while also paying its military officials lavish amounts of money.

And more is in the pipeline — including 400 sniper rifles, 2,000 assault rifles, 720 hand grenade launchers, 200 mortars, 150 Stinger missiles and 420 anti-tank missiles. (Sputnik News, Nov. 25)

Some of the documents even bear Obama’s and Secretary of State John Kerry’s signatures!

“After examination of just several files, there is the impression that the Ukrainian army is a branch of the U.S. Armed Forces,” said a CyberBerkut statement. “The volume of U.S. financial assistance amazes. … What will American taxpayers say?”

Naturally, the revelation has barely been mentioned in the Western corporate media. (The documents can be viewed online at cyber-berkut.org/en/.)

CyberBerkut obtained the documents after reportedly gaining access to a mobile device belonging to a member of Vice President Joe Biden’s delegation to Kiev on Nov. 20-21. Biden was there to show the squabbling factions in Kiev who’s boss: Washington and Wall Street. (Interfax.com, Nov. 21)

After parliamentary elections held on Oct. 26, Biden’s job was to weld the unwieldy group — united mainly by anti-communist and anti-Russia ideology — into a workable puppet regime that can establish a military and political beachhead for NATO on Russia’s doorstep.

Part of the deal was arranging for the ultranationalist Ukrainian government to appoint three foreigners to its new cabinet, including Natalie Jaresko, a longtime U.S. State Department employee, as the country’s new finance minister. Oligarch President Peter Poroshenko granted Jaresko Ukrainian citizenship so she could legally take the position.

Jaresko’s Horizon Capital investment fund received $150 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development — one of the agencies funding counterrevolutionary subversion around the world, from Kiev to Caracas.

U.S. votes against anti-Nazi resolution

While Biden was laying down the law in Kiev, another significant vote took place, this time in a committee of the United Nations.

Thirty countries, including Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Vietnam, proposed a resolution titled “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance.” The resolution called for reaffirming the Durban Declaration of the 2001 U.N. Conference Against Racism.

On Nov. 21, when the resolution came to a vote, 117 countries voted in favor. Only three voted no — the United States, Canada and Ukraine.

The European Union member nations and Australia — Washington’s junior partners in its Ukrainian adventure — were among 55 countries that abstained.

Washington’s “No” vote would have come as no surprise to the young Black, Brown and white activists protesting in Ferguson, Mo., that day in anticipation of the grand jury decision absolving the white cop who murdered Mike Brown. But it’s unlikely they or most people in the U.S. have heard anything about it in the corporate media.

The three countries that voted against the resolution each offered different, yet telling, excuses. Washington claimed the resolution was “politically motivated” by Moscow. Canada objected to references to the 2001 Durban Resolution, which reaffirmed the longstanding U.N. consensus that Israel’s ideology of Zionism is a form of racism. Kiev’s excuse was openly anti-communist, objecting that “Stalinism and neo-Stalinism are not condemned as strongly as Nazism.” (Truthout, Dec. 5)

Ukraine was an integral part of the socialist Soviet Union for many decades, and it was the Soviet Red Army, along with communist Ukrainian partisans, that liberated the country from Nazi occupation during World War II. Today, many factions of the Kiev government glorify the era of fascist collaboration under war criminal Stepan Bandera.

And while the U.S. is arming Ukraine’s fascists under the table — and perhaps soon overtly as well — Canada is sending military police to provide training and act as “advisers” in the war against the people of Novorossiya.

The U.S. ruling class aims to divert mass anger over racism, low wages and austerity into a new Cold War against Russia, and even into a catastrophic “hot” World War III if it cannot obtain regime change through sanctions and threats.

But the youth and working-class people fighting police brutality here have nothing to gain from yet another drive to war by the superrich. Instead, they have a common struggle with the people of Novorossiya — against fascism, racism and imperialism.