If you want to control someone, make him afraid. If you want to justify yourself, create a “them” to justify the “us”. A study of Russophobia, a western disease
I could, I suppose, finish the article before I start. I mean, all I would have to do is claim that the collective military budget of NATO member states on weapons systems to murder people, destroy infrastructures (and families) so that hefty reconstruction projects can be handed out to cronies is one point two trillion USD per year, each and every year. That is over one thousand billion dollars and that in one single year would be more than enough to eradicate poverty, globally, for good.
How does it work? Well, it’s easy. NATO is nothing more or less that a club which serves as the cutting edge of the BARFFS (the Banking, Arms, Resources, Finance, Food and Substances lobbies). The thing is, it needs a powerful foe to justify its existence. And Russia ticks all the boxes.
Russia’s army is the best equipped in the world, its military aviation is second to none, its missile systems would blast any NATO bridgehead to pieces and sink it into a crater half a kilometer deep and ten kilometers wide. It has resources, huge mineral wealth and is a leader in oil and natural gas reserves. The people are educated and its soldiers...well, ask Napoleon and Hitler.
The trouble is, Russia doesn’t actually do anything, does it? I mean, when is the last time Russia invaded Europe without being provoked (Hitler’s Wehrmacht was responsible for 26 million Soviet deaths)? So to perpetuate the myth that Russia is dangerous, to justify the existence of the NATO club, either Russia has to be provoked or else lies have to be told.
Let’s see. Georgia attacked and murdered Russian peace-keepers in South Ossetia in 2008 and planned to send troops into Abkhazia (both acts in direct contradiction of the international law in force, namely Georgia’s obligations under the Constitution of the USSR which bound member states to referendums to settle nationality issues, which Georgia refused to do). But NATO countries are not that hot when it comes to following international law, now, are they?
The Western reaction? Instead of telling the story as it was, they turned it on its head, turned it upside down and inside out and said that Russia invaded Georgia, complete with TV images of “Russian” missiles firing southwards when in fact they were Georgian missiles firing northwards. Russia’s response? A very measured and gentle pacification campaign to reduce tensions. Meaning that all you have to do is to take a western media story about Russia, turn it upside down, on its head and inside out and you start to get somewhere near the truth.
There ensued a myriad of provocations on the international stage, in which the West attacked Serbia, and Libya, and Syria, and orchestrated a Fascist coup in Ukraine (2014), ousting the democratically elected President and replacing him with a regime which carried out massacres of Russian-speaking citizens in Eastern Ukraine, amid chants of “Death to Russians and Jews” in the streets of Kiev. How much of this was reported in the Western media?
In fact, has the western media ever told the truth? Where the reports of NATO countries cavorting with terrorists in Libya on NATO’s own lists of proscribed groups? Where were the reports of NATO’s breaches of UNSC Resolutions 1970 and 1973 (2011)?
All we see is a constant barrage of negative stories about Russia, complete with negative imagery about the “regime” (instead of the democratically elected government), about a “dictatorship” (which is an insult to Russia and her institutions, because the President is democratically elected), about so-called “leaders of the opposition” (the leader of the Opposition is the leader of the second largest political party, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, not trouble-makers on the fringe of Russian society who gain a handful of votes) and one-word references to the leader, “Putin”. Yet they say Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel.
Much is reported about US and British aid programmes overseas, complete with pictures of bags with “US AID” stamped on the side, very little or nothing is mentioned about Russian overseas aid in emergency situations, often the first to arrive, anonymously, because Moscow does not grandstage events by hogging the camera and saying “Look everyone, look how we help everyone”. They get on with the job, helping everyone.
Little is reported about the atrocities perpetrated by western-backed terrorists in Syria, the forces Russia has helped the Syrian authorities to defeat. And nothing is said of the deplorable human rights records of NATO countries themselves, quick to create and sow lies and point the finger when upon further examination things are not what they report. How many citizens of the USA or UK have heard the sorry story of the Chagos Islands? You know, where the entire population was rounded up and deported by the British, who gassed their pets, I repeat, who gassed their pets, and then handed the territory over to who else? Chief bedmaster, the USA.
So perhaps if there was a little less hype and a little more good will, this world would be a better place. It is quite obvious that the move will have to be taken up by the grass roots, the political activists at the lowest levels, because the higher up you go, the greater the stench of the lobbies who wish to perpetrate the lies to justify their comfy existence.
So maybe it is time to hold political representatives to account. More goodwill, more cooperation, more international collaboration and less belligerance, provocation and orchestration.
The author can be contacted at timothy.hinchey@gmail.com