Completely reversing the roles of the United States and Russia might help Westerners understand how the Russians see 2014 events that reverberate today.
The alarming tension between Washington and Moscow expressed in Tuesday’s virtual summit between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden, in which Biden threatened that “things we did not do in 2014 we are prepared to do now,” stems directly from events that year in Ukraine. At the time Vice President Biden was Barack Obama’s virtual viceroy to the country. It is difficult to understand what is happening today without grasping the events of 2014.
The following pretend scenario, putting those exact events inside Canada, instead of Ukraine, and exchanging the Russian and U.S. roles, may help Westerners better understand what happened then and the roots of the crisis today. What if what is happening on Russia’s borders was instead happening on America’s?
[Reading Key: Canada=Ukraine; Ottawa=Kiev; Washington=Moscow; breakaway provinces New Brunswick & Nova Scotia=Donetsk & Luhansk; Prince Edward Island=Crimea; Halifax=Odessa; Georgiy Yevgenevich Borisenko=Victoria Nuland; Alexander Darchiev=Geoffrey Pyatt; Sergei Lavrov=John Kerry; Barack Obama=Vladimir Putin; Malaysian Airlines=Malaysian Airlines.]
The Parliament in Ottawa. (Wladyslaw/Wikimedia Commons)
US ‘Invades’ Canada After Russian Coup in Ottawa
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
May 3, 2016
The United States has “invaded” Canada to support the breakaway Maritime provinces that are resisting a Moscow-engineered violent coup d’etat against the democratically elected government in Ottawa.
The U.S. move is to protect separatists in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia after Washington annexed Prince Edward Island in a quickly arranged referendum.
The Islanders voted over 90 percent in favor of joining the United States following the Russian-backed coup. Moscow has condemned the referendum as illegal.
Hard-liners in the U.S. want Washington to annex all three Maritime provinces, whose fighters are defying the coup in Ottawa after Moscow installed an unelected prime minister.
Russian-backed Canadian federal troops have launched so-called “anti-terrorist” operations in the breakaway region to crush the rebellion, shelling residential areas and killing hundreds of civilians.
The Canadian army are joined by Russian-supported neofascist battalions that played a crucial role in the overthrow of the Canadian government. In Halifax, the extremists have burned alive at least 40 pro-U.S. civilians who had taken refugee in a trade union building.
Proof that Russia was behind the overthrow of the elected Canadian prime minister is contained in a leaked conversation between Georgiy Yevgenevich Borisenko, foreign ministry chief of Moscow’s North America department, and Alexander Darchiev, the Russian ambassador to Canada.
According to a transcript of the leaked conversation, Borisenko discussed who the new Canadian leaders should be six weeks before the coup took place.
Russia moved to launch the coup when Canada decided to take a loan package from the IMF that had fewer strings attached than a loan from Russia.
Russia’s Beijing ally was reluctant to back the coup. But this seemed of little concern to Borisenko who is heard on the tape saying, “Fuck China.”
Weeks before the coup Borisenko was filmed visiting protestors who had camped out in Parliament Square in Ottawa demanding the ouster of the prime minister. Borisenko is seen giving out cakes to the demonstrators.
The foreign ministers of Russian-allied Belarus and Cuba also marched with the protestors through the streets of Ottawa against the government. Russian media has portrayed the unconstitutional change of government an act of “democracy.”
Borisenko said in a speech last year that Russia had spent $5 billion over the past decade to “bring democracy” to Canada.
The money was spent on training “civil society.” The use of non-governmental organizations to overthrow foreign governments that stand in the way of Russia’s economic and geo-strategic interests is well documented, especially in a 1991 Washington Post column, “Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups.”
The United States has thus moved to ban Russian NGOs from operating in the country.
The coup took place as protestors violently clashed with police, breaking through barricades and killing a number of officers. Snipers fired on the police and the crowd from a nearby building in Parliament Square in which the Russian embassy had set up offices just a few floors above, according to Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
Russian lawmakers have compared President Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler for allegedly sending U.S. troops into the breakaway provinces and for annexing Prince Edward Island in an act of “American aggression.” The Maritimes have had long ties to the U.S. dating back to the American Revolution.
The Kremlin. (Dmitry Ivanov/Wikimedia Commons)
Russia says it has intelligence proving that U.S. tanks have crossed the Maine border into New Brunswick, but have failed to make the evidence public. They have revealed no satellite imagery. Russian news media only reports American-backed rebels fighting in the Maritimes, not American troops.
Washington denies it has invaded but says some American volunteers have entered the Canadian province to join the fight.
Russia’s puppet prime minister now in charge in Ottawa has only offered as proof six American passports of U.S. soldiers found in New Brunswick.
The Maritime Canadian rebels have secured anti-aircraft weapons enabling them to shoot down a number of Royal Canadian Air Force transport planes.
A Malaysian airlines passenger jet was also shot down over Nova Scotia killing all on board. Russia has accused President Obama of being behind the incident, charging that the U.S. provided the anti-aircraft weapon.
Moscow has refused to release any intelligence to support its claim, other than statements by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Russia’s ultimate aim, beginning with the imposition of sanctions on the U.S., appears to be a color revolution in Washington to overthrow Obama and install a Russian-friendly American president.
This is clear from numerous statements by Russian officials and academics. A former Russian national security advisor who President Vladimir Putin consults on foreign policy has said the United States should be broken into three countries.
He has also written that Canada is the stepping stone to the United States and that if the U.S. loses Canada it will fail to control North America.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former UN correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London and began his professional career as a stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe
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Thank you Sir, I needed this. Very nicely done, I’m digging those hot links.
What the hell do Americans think about? Other than themselves not much.
It is quite obvious that a large number of Americans have opinions about the situation along the Mexico / US border. I’m doubting any one group of opinionated individuals or the collective exceed 50% of the U.S. population. We must remember the lack of thought conducted by the US population at large with respect to the condition of U.S. politics. Hell, it’s obvious Americans do not understand US politics. See the election of Trump.
Truthfully though the situation could get very serious if Russia intervened and started supporting anyone gathering at the Mexico border to the U.S.. Can you image the howls and teeth gnashing.
Americans would undoubtedly claim that the Russians have NO valid reason to be involved because of the geological relationship of the location of Mexico to the US. The cry would be, ” they have no right, it’s none of Russia’s business.” And for once they would be right.
What happens between Russia and Ukraine makes me not one iota of difference. I do not care what they do to each other. I don’t want to hear one agonizing hypocritical breath over the threat to civilians. The events there are no comparison to those the US, the Bushie’s and the misguided Pentagonian hawks have done and are are doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, South America and Central America, not to speak of the rape of Vietnam.
The Idiot of the Ukraine would love to nuke some Russians. I do not want the US on his side. Full Stop PERIOD
Always remember that among the God fearing everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die. I would classify those individuals who do as radical extremists. It is my firm opinion those Zionists out there are radical extremists for they are all convinced, including Uncle Joe, that they have It right and no one else does. This is clearly what Uncle Joe thinks. Just ask him and see if he doesn’t ignore the question by claiming his religious beliefs are out of bounds.
None of this bullshit is worth ending human life on the planet. Unfortunately we have another Zionist as POTUS. Now to be clear I consider all Zionist radicals. , especially those who wrap themselves in “Old Glory”
Thanks Joe, I thoroughly enjoyed your tack.
Thanks CN
Well done, Joe. A stark distillation of events from the much needed perspective of ‘the shoe being on the other foot.’
Among the larger battles of our time is the old concept of ‘winning hearts and minds’ and the always compliant U.S. msm has done their tried and true, if not patented—dirty work effectively upon the readily compliant U.S. public in establishing the so-called, now even amorphously mythical Official Narrative. So much so,
if reliably sourced, I read a few days ago that 50% of the U.S. public has sanctioned the notion of sending U.S. troops in force into Ukraine should shit hit the fan.
I recoil from accepting that number of people actually having been whipped into such a faux frenzy, but find the comprehension of the world’s larger events by the same nuance-lacking people to be woefully uninformed in so many incidences of gravitas that I can no longer with any assurance offer what I believe is a sufficiently grounded enough opinion as to that 50% number’s veracity. It’s as easy to believe, or disbelieve, without knowing the source(s) of said poll.
So articles like this off-take are of immense importance in cutting through the all-pervasive BS proffered up by the Western state-sanctioned organs of record 24/7. Like a song with a good ‘hook,’ this one is deserving of more airplay. I’ll say it for many others, thanks again for being on the side of objective truth as the msm rhetoric continues in its ramp/amp up.
Bravo Joe, very cleverly done.
lol, Lauria. I didn’t know you wrote satire!
I think it’s our Intelligence and State Depts. that write satire. Most of us don’t recognize it unless it’s pointed out as clearly as Joe does.