Aggression against neighboring countries, endless wars, dismantling states, violent border modifications? Does this remind us of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage or of their political opponents, Clinton and Bush clans, or of Tony Blair and David Cameron?
Many had hoped that the firing of former FBI director James Comey would bring an end to the disgrace of ‘Russiagate’.
Russiagate was quite possibly the biggest canard in recent American political history. Take for example actual US political and policy scandals starting with the biggest.
–Iraqi WMD, Syrian chemical weapons, Libya ‘killing its own people’, Yugoslavia as an ‘aggressor:
Serbia’s President elect Aleksandar Vucic has recently exposed damning statements from William Walker, the American former head of the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) mission to the war torn Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija.
Vucic’ statements speak of Walker’s desire to create a so-called Greater Albania that will annex parts of neighbouring states including Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Greece into a large Albanian state in the Balkans.
Civil War in the Balkan state of Macedonia is one step closer after a new Parliamentary Speaker took office against the wishes of Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov and a majority of Macedonians.
Talat Xhaferi from the Albanian party Democratic Union for Integration, has further provoked the tense situation in the former Yugoslav republic by placing a flag of the Republic of Albania on his desk beside the flags of Macedonia and the EU, of which neither Macedonia nor Albania is a member.
In groups of people there are always bullies who feel entitled, for no particular reason, to want more than the rest and to dominate the others in complete disregard of the common good. Fortunately for convivial people, bullies tend to have the psychological subtlety of dominant male gorillas who beat loudly on their chests and fight over food and females. Therefore bullies often annihilate each other. The more serious social problems occur when they collaborate to gang up on others.
Today was the day that the US thought it could break Russia’s partnership with Syria and also with Iran. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer laid out the goals clearly yesterday. It was America’s ‘duty’ to break Russia away from countries like Syria, Iran and allegedly North Korea. It didn’t happen.
First of all, Russia and Syria are close partners. Secondly, North Korea is not a partner of Russia, but nor does Russia want renewed conflict in the Korean peninsula.
Donald Trump has just approved Montenegro as NATO’s newest member state. The move is contentious as Montenegro was bombed in the illegal 1999 NATO war of aggression against Yugoslavia of which it was then a part.
Montenegro peacefully split from Serbia in 2006 to become a small independent state.
While the Montenegrin government has supported moves to join the US led alliance, socialist and pro-Serbia opposition parties have been dramatically opposed to such moves. The moves also roused public opinion during a series of anti-NATO protests in the small west Balkan state.
Britain once had a vibrant anti-war movement. It had one as recently as 2003 when the ‘Stop The War Coalition’ was formed to oppose George Bush and Anthony Blair’s war on Iraq. Since then, the anti-war movement in the UK has been demoralised, fragmented and remains deeply contradicted over Syria, with some people who claim to be anti-war, supporting official western policy for regime change, something that now even the Trump administration seems to have given up in respect of Syria.
The 24th of March, 2017, is the 18th anniversary of the worst war crime in Europe since the death of Hitler. NATO, not sufficiently happy that much of Yugoslavia had all ready been broken apart, decided to drill the final nail in the coffin by bombing Serbia.
Hospitals, orphanages, churches, television channels, countless other civilian targets including homes as well as the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade were destroyed. Thousands of Serbian families were made refugees and some still do not have proper homes, even in 2017.
I, along with others have been wondering just how the events in Syria from 2011 onwards might have unraveled had the internet not been as advanced as it has been in the last six years.
When the US and the UK invaded Iraq in 2003, those Iraqis who knew of the internet saw it as an exotic, alien entity. Mobile phones were scarce, and even satellite television was not permitted prior to 2003 while email services were mostly limited to government officials.
