Ukraine.

 A common western cultural assumption is that: if people are protesting, it must be because they are oppressed. Therefore western leaders are careful to describe war in Ukraine as a question of a bullying big Russia and a plucky violated Ukraine, and not as modestly equipped rebels fighting defensively for self determination against central government.

In multi ethnic and federal communist states, communist ideology held that, to prevent 'domination' by the largest ethnic republic and to engineer 'brotherhood and unity', internal borders should not reflect ethnicity. For example, in communist era Yugoslavia, over a million Serbs found themselves living in majority Serb areas, but outside the borders of Serbia. The borders between the various Yugoslav republics were artificial and internal administrative borders, but borders, in the war years of the 1990s, which Washington strategists and politicians insisted on maintaining, on the declared basis that borders are inviolate and that nations must be multicultural and multiracial.

In the former Yugoslavia, Bosnian, Croatian, and Kosovan ethnic leaders selected by and loyal to Washington received massive military aid, silenced any co-ethnic opposition or voices for dialogue and peace, slaughtered or expelled Serb ethnic minorities, and came to control the largest possible geographical space. The largest American military bases in the world are now in Kosovo and Bosnia. Bosnia is split entirely in two between a Muslim and Serb sector, and ruled by an American selected UN overlord, but the Serb sector is not allowed to reunify with Serbia, which it borders.

East Ukraine is Russian. Re-unification with Russia would make a very just resolution to civil war. If this is not achieved, it is only a matter of time until the larger, and directly USA backed Kiev forces, push out rebel groups and millions of refugees flee to Russia, in a parallel fashion to the 1995 Croatian Operation Storm, planned by American generals, and which expelled hundreds of thousands of Serbs.

Recent precedent and history has no place in the western version of events. Ideology moves forward in a straight line, the past is something tainted that should be left behind. There is only a mish mash of 'European integration', 'globalism' and 'multiculturalism': ethnic self determination is a racist evil; non-allied nations which seek to maintain their separate identity are suspect. The ideas of the past do not need to be engaged with, only rejected or ignored, and those who will not reject, must be damned.

When narratives that support western allies must be promoted, but the truth about these allies would undermine public assent, facts are also disregarded, or awarded secondary moral importance. For example, a research article on the rise of and Kiev government backing for outright fascist groups in Ukraine starts with a  qualifying paragraph reminding the reader that anything Russian is a ridiculous lie, and that what follows about Ukraine are only 'traits' and 'tendencies'. That's the worst part - a research article, but the writer won't present his research until he says 'I'm a good boy really, I told them Russia is the nasty one!' 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nikolas-kozloff/note-to-ukraine-stop-whit_b_6535316.html 

The BBC specializes in publishing review articles which confine themselves to the limits of and so reinforce a Nato moral narrative, the one where there is no what happened before, and where things were just fine until some dictator suddenly committed abuses to rouse western 'concern'. For example:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30278606 

'Russia badly overplayed its hand last year when it tried to bring Ukraine into the Eurasian Union against the passionate opposition of many Ukrainians.'

The first paragraph is duplicitous. Russia did not bring Ukraine into any such union, the Ukrainian parliament decided upon a favourable package of economic aid and agreements. Certainly many Ukrainians opposed the decision, but there is no evaluation of what percentage, and no acknowledgement that many supported this. A gross omission is the lack of historical context that Ukraine was already a country divided into opposed and geographically cohesive blocs - and lack of reference to American interference and support for the violent overthrow of an elected government.

 

'The European Union is now risking the same thing by trying to bring Ukraine into the West without reference to economic reality or the willingness of European publics to bear the enormous costs involved, and at a time when the EU itself is in deepening crisis.'

The second paragraph refers to western actions of well over a year ago as if they had just occurred, exculpating the west of any responsibility for the pro-EU / NATO coup in Kiev and for the present civil war. There is no consideration of any costs to Ukraine, only of costs to Europe.

However, with the EU the subject of the sentence now and not Russia, the writer swaps the language of malign domination of one country by another for the neutral language of economic calculus (and by juxtaposition, benign intention). Russia the bellicose actor, the west the peaceful responder. The propaganda is first rate.

They asked that their government help

Those brave people

They read were fighting dictatorship

The government had already been helping

And now spoke out in public

Those who asked were reassured

When they looked again

They saw those brave people

Kill hundreds and say 'no' to millions

This time, they didn't ask anything of the government

The dead confused them

They didn't want to wonder if those brave people were dictators

If they themselves had been comfortable fools

And least of all

That their government was the dictatorship.