Hypocrisy reigns between Canada and Ukraine!

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It is often said that truth is the first ca­ sualty of war. But in the dark days of late capitalism we have learned one more thing. From the tall tales about murdered “incubator babies” and alleged “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, we know that even before a war is declared, the truth comes under withering assault.

As Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper sends fighter jets and troops to NATO bases in Poland, this becomes evi­ dent. After over 80 per cent of the people in Crimea voted to rejoin Russia, western media and politicians went on a propa­ ganda rampage, presenting any argument they could imagine to de-legitimize the referendum. While Putin’s actions were heavy-handed, Russia was not alone in recognizing the validity of the vote. Many countries in the global South did.

But the Western media played its usual role in trumpeting the claims that the election was held at “gunpoint,” ignor­ ing the fact that Russian soldiers were already legally stationed in the region, by treaty, as they had been for decades.

The most brazen display of Western hypocrisy came after the vote in Crimea. Prime Minister Harper flew to Ukraine in March for the purpose of expressing sup­ port for the new Ukrainian government and to shake his fist at Russia. Even after flying there and back, Canadian politi­ cians and media were silent on the ultranationalist character of the new regime in Kiev.

Taking advantage of folks with a short memory, Harper did a double about-face. Late last year he visited Israel. Even writ­ ers at the right-wing Sun newspapers and the National Post expressed their loathing of the tired old argument that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism. Of course, the ongoing illegal and expanding (continued from page 8: “Quebec election: PQ debacle returns Liberals to power”)

of class conciliation. The conservatism of the union bureaucracy needs to be challenged if struggles are to win. This is a task that QS, or at least the social­ ist contingents, within the party need to take up.

The PQ has faced crises before, and we are far from hearing its death knell. It remains a mass party that profits from its association with partial advances born of past struggles. But its hegemo­ ny over the independence movement has been shaken.

It scarcely seems likely that the party can reverse its right-wing trajectory, al­ Israeli settlements in the West Bank were not mentioned.

Fast forward to Harper’s recent visit to Ukraine. Suddenly his viewpoint is re­ versed: annexation of another country or region is instantly outrageous, whereas anti-Semitism (this time not from the dark crevices, but from the junior part­ ner in the ruling coalition government in Kiev) is ignored. If Harper were a man of democratic principles, such cognitive dissonance would make him dizzy!

The Ukrainian Jewish community was shamelessly used by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. A distributed leaflet, purportedly from the “pro-Russian” group, the Donetsk People’s Republic, ordered all Jews in the area to surrender their money and register themselves. But the document was a fraud. Despite Ker­ ry’s fast and furious condemnation of the document, nobody claimed authorship for this supposedly public edict.

Again, Kerry has no record of speaking out against the actual racism of Svoboda or any other pro-Maidan fascists. He does, however, have a history of speaking out against a foreign adventure that was started and waged under a U.S. leader from the Democratic Party. Kerry served in the Vietnam War under President Lyn­ don B. Johnson and, upon his return to the U.S., joined the antiwar movement as a member of Vietnam Veterans Against Malu Baumgarten / Socialist Action