That Unswerving Loyalty to Criminals

We do still remember how Britain’s Theresa May was handling the incident that a former Russian spy and his daughter were, on British soil, badly poisoned by some substance which reminded somebody of a nerve gas which at some time had been developed in the Soviet Union.

We also remember that Israel was, and still is, busy putting rifle bullets into large numbers of unarmed demonstrators. And early last weekend the USA were sending 100 cruise missiles into Syria, officially as a punishment for having used chemical weapons against an area which was occupied by some group of the opposition – Trump was very satisfied with the result and made an announcement including the formula ”Mission accomplished”; but also Britain and France had been taking part in the attack.

The interesting thing with these events is the reaction of the western mainstream media. I still have not come across any official condemnation of the Israeli mass shootings, and in the UN Security Council it were of course the USA who vetoed any further investigation of the matter (which – of course (?) – did not either result in any condemnation of the USA in our media). The wild accusations of Theresa May against Russia (in formulations suggesting that the matter were an initiative of the Russian government) have never been supported by convincing evidence which would have been accessible to the public. Meanwhile, one of the victims has very far recovered, and also the other is out of danger (which would be a rather improbable outcome if Putin himself had been sending some professionals to do the job). Further, in Facebook there appeared a while ago a note that less than 20 km from Salisbury there is still a laboratory where substances are handled which are very closely related to chemical weapons. And in today’s HBL (of 15.04., p.17) there is still a note saying that according to Lavrov a Swiss laboratory was in the samples from Salisbury finding traces of the US-developed nerve poison BZ. But up to now the representatives of the Western world have (with very few exceptions, e.g. Austria) all the time supported Theresa May. And it is certainly not much of a surprise that also now the official speakers of the West are all supporting Trump and his missile attack. – It does not seem to disturb anybody that rather exactly one year ago there was a very similar situation: the USA had just mentioned that they were considering a withdrawal from Syria, and immediately there followed an attack with chemical weapons. In this year the weapon seemingly consisted even of chlorine, which is easy to get hold of because of being very widely used (e.g. for the disinfection of water) and which does not need any chemical processing (being a chemical element). And at least I think it quite possible (on the basis of something as harmless as my memories from 1968 and the mental development of some the then activists) that somebody in that opposition group decided that it were a quite justified action to sacrifice some civilians – especially some of those very appealing children – for the purpose of keeping the Americans in Syria, with the application of some chlorine as a result. These things would have had to be investigated (and Russia and the Syrian government did in fact invite investigators to the area in question), but, in fond memory of the procedures in 2003, Trump took care to act before any investigation would have had a chance to arrive at results. And afterwards he used also Bush’s formulation of ”mission accomplished”. And even those western governments which had not participated in the attack (e.G. Germany’s Angela Merkel) supported the action at least afterwards. (And praise to Sauli Niinistö for at least asking for more dialogue in his comment).

So, what has REALLY happened? Can we perhaps assume that Theresa May for some reason or other (does she, e.g., think that her position in the Conservative party needs some strengthening?) used the poisoning incident as an occasion to demonstrate fighting spirit against ”everybody’s enemy” (in hope it would help her in the same way as Margaret Thatcher’s bravery against Argentine was helping her reputation)? And also, that Trump needs some boost of his standing in order to prevent that his party loses still some seat in the senate? Well, to accuse some supposed ”enemy” of misdeeds (and never bother about the evidence) for which he has to be punished is now really the basic prescription for demagogy (to which Trump is no stranger – and one can also remind that Trump was during his time in office producing DAILY little less than 6 lies (or misleading claims)). Thus, can we perhaps assume that those 100 cruise missiles (aside of being a great favour to the armament industry – which now can sell the replacements – and also a possibly successful weapons test – because there were also some new, stealthy missiles among the lot) essentially a piece of election campaign? After all, he had promised to ”make America great again”, and this was at least some big bang. And the Democrats, having made some crusading point of his Russian contacts, will not be in the position to blame him for it, so that from Trump’s side it was perhaps a very successful move. Only: do our western media and politicians now suddenly like Theresa May (of the ”hard brexit”) and this truly abominable Trump so much that they SUPPORT these political mamoeuvres instead of, e.g., obstinately asking for EVIDENCE for all those claims. Or have they been shown some evidence in some small circle, in which they were too well-behaved to express their skepticism? In this case at least I would VERY much wish to hear/see more evidence. Because we have been lied to in the past, and the impression is that the politicians have, from the success of their lies, a bit too well learned how easy and convenient it is to lie a bit (or more than that) more – one just needs to remember Reagan and his ”trickle-down theory, and others.