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The MoA Week In Review – (NOT Ukraine) OT 2022-111
Last week’s posts at Moon of Alabama:
The Ukraine’s military House of Officers in Vinnytsia after the attack on it.
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Other issues:
Brexit:
Spies:
Biden’s scandal:
Covid-19:
Wokeism:
Cryptocrime:
Postil stuff I had missed:
Use as open thread for issues not related to the war in Ukraine …
bevin@25 in the never-ending campaign to flatter cryptofascist friends volunteered that the US was oppressing Afghans by forcing vileness like schools for girls and similar moral atrocities hither and yon about the planet. Even worse Bevin asserted cultural change was itself oppression indistinguishable from taking land! The implication that US imperialism is for the fun of imposing cultural norms is by the way anti-Marxist, and also nuts (to be redundant.) This kind of obscurantism about the real nature of US imperialism serves reaction, in its tiny way. The idea imperialism is about turning foreigners into pale copies of Americans is the same kind of logic that says America was created to promote whiteness. It inverts cause and effect, then attributes the alleged cause to the mind of (not even an individual!) a group. This is not Marxist but I think it is not even left.
bevin@25 alwo has “What wokeism is about is the new Liberal Totalitarianism, far more intrusive and ‘total’ than anything that either Orwell or Beria imagined, and constantly monitored by a vast machine patrolling social media and private correspondence to ensure conformity. Total Conformity.” The comment is not very clear in its comments on a couple of links, but this is not in quotes, so it appears to be bevin’s words. In a fit of misplaced charity, I didn’t assumed it might not be bein’s own opinion. Orwell is a leading anti-Communist propagandist, in no way a real thinker, and Beria is a anti-Communist scarecrow. Totalitarianism is a BS pseudo-concept devoid of genuine meaning, an amalgam to pretend Communism=Fascism. The European tradition of compulsory attendance in churches run by the state, of witch hunts killing thousands, of inquisitions killing thousand, of crusades killing thousands, of even at time sumptuary laws (!) only an ignorant fool takes such hysteria seriously. That’s the charitable interpretation, the more likely one is deliberately pandering to the most ignorant and backward elements. Lumpen can be petty-bourgeois, it seems.
Called out, bevin@60 doubles down. It is still a lie that the US imperialism is about forcing evil Enlightenment ideas on innocents, presumably too noble and pure in their natural simplicity, rather than rather concrete interests. (And wanting to intimidate other countries is a very concrete interest for a country whose currency must be backed by blood.) The US intervention in Afghanistan began long before 9/11 and it was not, not, not in any way woke. bevin’s concern for the moral purity of Afghanistan, safe from insidious outside influences, means bevin was for the Hekmatyars. bevin wrote “The point is that is is no business of the US government to force Afghans, Mexicans or any other nationality to send girls to school, stop ogling young boy dancers, read the Bible or eat each other.”
Nor is it the business of Commies in Kabul to force imported ideas down the throats of the decent rural peoples either. Spiritually bevin is one with the Hekmatyars. They too are horrified that the social fabric will come undone if the moral corrosion of the Enlightenment (which by the way was not a white phenomenon; was international; could not even take place until the influence of the New World and other civilizations like the Arabs, Persians, Chinese stimulated progress in understanding humanity.) Yes, reactionaries have always feared that if there were no king, or there wasn’t the one true church, or all men were proper men or whatever nasty little hobgoblin the bevins love too much to give up, then everything would just melt away. But all that’s melted away was sense and decent human feeling for others.
And again, it is a lie that it was ever the business of the US to make Afghan girls go to school. You don’t expose the hypocrisy of US imperialism by pretending, somehow, that the minimal concessions to human feeling, aimed at whitewashing, that white really is black! This is insane, not in a genuinely mentally ill way, but a crazed ideology.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Jul 18 2022 14:48 utc | 91
It’s great to see a few have discovered and read Lavrov’s Isvestia article, which is at Saker’s and the MFA’s English site which is finally accessible after three says of being blocked. It reads like classic Chomsky from the late 1980s as some of the many crimes committed by the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals are recounted. Lavrov’s essay is very timely given the recent confession by Bolton that he committed crimes against humanity. Those admissions were also cited by China’s MFA and published as in this Global Times article, “Overthrowing foreign governments deep in bones of how US conducts its foreign policy”:
Bolton’s admission is so revealing. Leading US politicians trumpet the so-called “rules-based international order” for one purpose: to ensure that the US can easily interfere in other countries’ affairs and overthrow their governments at its own will. This is exactly the kind of “rules” and “order” that people like Bolton want absolutely to defend. The people of the world, however, will not let them, Wang said.
Wang also mentioned the book Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War written by Lindsey A. O’Rourke from Boston College, saying it documents 64 covert interventions by the US from 1947 to 1989 and six overt attempts.
US’ operations didn’t stop after the Cold War. Over the years, the US has been creating political turbulence, interference and inciting color revolutions in Eurasia, Wang said, noting US officials even went to streets to provoke political confrontation through supporting the opposite party of other countries.
Lavrov explores the pretexts prior to those major crimes against humanity and turns his focus on Ukraine:
“If anyone doubted that the Minsk Package was anything but yet another fake, Petr Poroshenko dispelled this myth by saying on June 17, 2022: ‘The Minsk Agreements did not mean anything to us, and we had no intention to carry them out… our goal was to remove the threat we faced… and win time in order to restore economic growth and rebuild the armed forces. We achieved this goal. Mission accomplished for the Minsk Agreements.’ The people of Ukraine are still paying the price of this fake. For many years now, the West has been forcing them to accept an anti-Russian neo-Nazi regime. What a waste of energy for Olaf Scholz with his calls to force Russia to agree to an agreement guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. There already had been an agreement to this effect, the Minsk Package, and Berlin with Paris were the ones who derailed it by shielding Kiev in its refusal to abide by the document. The fake has been exposed – finita la commedia.” [My Emphasis]
Some commentator asked me several days ago when Poroshenko made his confession; well, there it is all bolded for you. Lavrov continues and skewers the OPCW for its “performance” in Syria after getting the Nobel Prize for its efforts in destroying Syria’s chemical weapons. Lavrov provides testimony showing why many critical UN agencies must be purged and reformed:
“All attempts to force the OPCW Technical Secretariat to perform its duties in good faith and ensure a transparent investigation into these incidents, as required by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), failed. This, however, did not come as a surprise. The Western countries have long privatised the Technical Secretariat by having their representatives appointed to the key positions within this structure. They contributed to staging these incidents and used them as a pretext for US, British, and French airstrikes against Syria. Incidentally, they carried out these bombings just a day before a group of OPCW inspectors arrived there to investigate the incidents at Russia’s insistence, while the West did everything to prevent this deployment.” [My Emphasis]
Then there were the Novichok smear attempts using OPCW:
“The West and the OPCW Technical Secretariat it controls demonstrated their ability to stage fake incidents with the would-be poisonings of the Skripals and Alexey Navalny. In both cases, Russia sent multiple requests to The Hague, London, Berlin, Paris, and Stockholm, all left without a reply, even though they fully conformed with the CWC provisions and required a response.”
And that provided the lead for the Bioweapons Treaty violations discovered in Ukraine which resulted in a warning to the world:
“In fact, the Pentagon’s military-biological activities around the world, especially in the post-Soviet countries, require the closest attention in light of the multiplying evidence of criminal experiments with the most dangerous pathogens in order to create biological weapons conducted under the guise of peaceful research.” [My Emphasis]
If there are any pro-Macron Russians in Lavrov’s audience, he sets the record straight by illuminating his antics that decisively show he’s no friend of Russia:
“One element of the geopolitical gambit against Russia is granting the status of an eternal EU candidate country to Ukraine and Moldova, which, it seems, will also face an unenviable fate. Meanwhile, a PR campaign has been initiated by President of France Emmanuel Macron to promote the ‘European political community,’ which offers no financial or economic benefits, but demands full compliance with the EU’s anti-Russia actions. The principle behind it is not either/or but ‘who is not with us is against us.’ Emmanuel Macron explained the gist of the ‘community’: the EU will invite all European countries – ‘from Iceland to Ukraine’ – to join it, but not Russia [Russia’s the largest nation in Europe]. I would like to stress that we are not eager to join, but the statement itself showcases the essence of this obviously confrontational and divisive new undertaking.” [My Emphasis]
Lavrov concludes by illustrating the obstacles erected by the Outlaw US Empire–the “main producer” in this ongoing drama–and what the West must do after telling his audience Russia did all that it could to avoid how the future unfolds:
“It soon became evident that NATO members do not keep their word and that their goal is the supremacy of the North-Atlantic Alliance. Even then we continued our diplomatic efforts, proposing to formalise the principle of equal and inseparable security in a legally binding agreement. We proposed this a number of times, the last one in December 2021, but received a flat denial in response. They told us directly: there will be no legal guarantees outside NATO. Which means that the support of the political documents approved at the OSCE summits turned out to be a cheap fake. And now NATO, driven by the United States, has gone even further: they want to dominate over the entire Asia-Pacific region in addition to the Euro-Atlantic. NATO members make no effort to conceal the target of their threats, and China’s leadership has already publicly declared its position regarding such neo-colonial ambitions. Beijing has already responded by citing the principle of indivisible security, declaring its support for applying it on a global scale to prevent any country from claiming its exclusivity. This approach fully coincides with Russia’s position. We will make consistent efforts to defend it together with our allies, strategic partners and many other like-minded countries.”
And I should note that the Outlaw US Empire still makes attempts to control other nations by bribing them as this article reveals, “US Ambassador nominee’s claim that Nepal grants MCC amid ‘China’s disinformation campaign’ baseless and offensive”:
“It is well known that the MCC Compact between Nepal and the US has sparked a heated debate in Nepal. The Nepali Parliament specially passed an “interpretive declaration,” which declares that the Constitution of Nepal shall prevail over the Compact and other associated agreements and that being a party to the Compact, Nepal shall not be a part of any US’ strategy, military or security alliance, including the Indo-Pacific Strategy. These are legitimate actions of the Nepali government and people to defend their sovereignty and independence and safeguard national interests, read the statement.”
Lavrov’s closing words have already been presented above. He’s politely telling the Outlaw US Empire to desist, that it cannot turn the tide of historical change no matter how hard it tries because its methods are now so well known they’re rebuffed soon after surfacing. Escobar’s descriptive term, Empire of Chaos, remains correct but is finally circling the toilet bowl as the emerging Multipolar World rids itself of the last Colonial Empire. And as usual, if you refuse to listen to Lavrov, Putin will then speak as he recently promised he would. And if you turn a deaf ear to them both, then you’ll face Mr. Shoigu and the unmatched Russian military.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 18 2022 16:02 utc | 98
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