THE WEST HAS FALLEN DOWN A SINKHOLE TO BANANA REPUBLIC STATUS

How much state illegality can any nation’s leaders indulge in while they pose as saintly upholders of a ‘rules based system’? Like being a little bit pregnant they could be said to be somewhat honest. Most crooks would probably say the same. But when do little white lies become big black ones? Perhaps when it comes to upholding the human rights of refugees and refraining from taking money that doesn’t belong to you?

The idea has been floated in recent days that forcing men who have fled from the war in Ukraine back home to be sent to the front (where around 800 are dying or being wounded each day). This is the very reason they left Ukraine. The law on refugees is quite clear. You don’t send them back to a war zone where they risk being killed or wounded. But it seems that those with political power in the collective west are determined to do just this.

Then we have the next big idea that flouts not only international law but arguably all laws since they began to be codified. Thou Shalt Not Steal. The powers that be in the European Union have long been looking for a way to take the money of all Russians that have been frozen in European bank accounts. Whether you support the Ukrainian regime and wish every possible financial assistance be given it, or not, the name for this endeavour, however you dress it up, is theft.

There has been a certain clearly visible track record of this kind of activity stretching back to at least George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. Remember what they called torture after a long search for the right words to call it? Those words ended up being ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’. 

Then there was the name the political elites of the USA found instead of prisoners of war in the previous campaign to that in Iraq. For those taken from Afghanistan (some of whom there was no evidence against, their having been offered up for a reward by other Afghanis) and brought to the camp in Guantanamo Bay. To have called them prisoners of war they would then have to be afforded some rights. But as ‘Enemy Combatants’ suddenly they need to be afforded no rights at all. Torture (waterboarding) could be applied to them along with other ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’.

You will recall the abuses at Abu Ghraib in Afghanistan which demonstrated what happens when you cover your crimes with alternative names that are convenient for PR purposes but which are deadly for those who suffer, mostly in silence, far from any oversight by the authorities who are normally assigned to ensure people are not treated in this way.

The political elites of the western world are obsessed with winning the war against Russia that they have chosen to fight. Despite Russia attempting for the best part of a decade to resolve its problems with the West via Ukraine, the political elites of the West had other ideas. An entire series of fabrications over that near decade were communicated via the western mainstream media to provide a totally false picture of events. Naming Russia as the aggressor is one of the fabrications that is still in use on a daily basis in the West.

Russia was the one attempting to find a peaceful solution to the situation in eastern Ukraine. It was Angela Merkal, Francoise Hollande, Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky who were not. In recent times both Merkel and Poroshenko have said that they had no intention of fulfilling the United Nations mandated Minsk Accords but merely used them to provide time for Ukraine to re-arm.

Then there was the promise given by almost a round dozen of the West’s then political elites to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move an inch nearer Russia’s border if he agreed to present no barriers to the reunification of Germany.

How much trust do you think the Russians now have in anything western political elites say or do? To what degree do they believe that western political elites adhere to the moral, ethical and humanitarian tenets and laws which they claim to espouse? When those who claim to be the most reliable and honest do-gooders around are known liars how is ANY trust possible?

And when no one can point to any agreement broken by Russia that comes anywhere close to those above then you can see how the Russians view the political elites of the West and just how much trust they might have in any agreement those elites might offer. About as much as any state might put in what those who lead a banana republic might say or any agreement they offered.