2015: The year Russia exposed Western barbarism
Finian Cunningham
2015 was the year Russia exposed the barbaric nature of Western powers,
from their criminal conspiracy for regime change in Syria, to aggression
against Yemen, Iran, Russia, China and any country that does not toe
the line.
It is a thread we can find in many other stories, many of which were
covered by Western media. The difference is the latter media omit or
lose the all-important thread of how Western powers have created or
exacerbated major, pressing international problems.
Crisis made by the EU
Take the European Union's immigration crisis. Up to one million refugees
have been recorded entering EU borders this year, according to the
United Nations. Thousands perished while crossing the Mediterranean and
Aegean Seas on rickety boats to reach the shores of Italy or Greece. EU
nations held several top-level summits on the emergency, but no
collective response was forthcoming, leading to much recrimination
between the 28-member states. Countries such as Britain and France were
accused of not doing enough to take in refugees, while "front line"
states Greece, Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia complain they are being
overwhelmed by the influx.
Internal EU tensions have threatened to unravel the founding
principles of the bloc, such as the free movement of citizens under the
Schengen Agreement. Germany, under Chancellor Angela Merkel, has emerged
as the most generous of EU states, taking in the largest numbers of
asylum seekers. However, Merkel's ruling Christian Democrat party has
incurred a backlash from anti-immigrant groups. Elsewhere Europe has
seen the rise of right-wing, anti-immigrant and anti-EU political
parties, from the National Front in France
to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in Britain. Similar
gains for ultra-nationalists have been made in Denmark, the Netherlands
and Belgium.
The bitter irony of the EU immigration crisis and its pressure on
the foundations of the bloc is that most of the would-be immigrants have
come from war-torn Syria. As astute observers - published by RT and
other alternative media, but censored out of the Western media - have
noted, the conflict in Syria precipitating the refugee crisis
has come about from unlawful interference in the Arab country by the EU.
Britain and France have given military support to an insurgency against
the elected government of President Bashar al-Assad, along with support
from the US and its regional allies, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Heresy of truth: Terrorist blowback
Most of the insurgent groups in Syria are in fact comprised of foreign
mercenaries espousing radical Islamist ideologies, associated with
internationally designated terrorist groups, such as Al-Qaeda and the
so-called Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). The latter claimed the
massacre in Paris on November 13, when some 130 people were killed in
gun and bomb attacks. But to say "blowback" in the Western media is
tantamount to outrageous thought-crime. It is verboten.
The EU has previously sanctioned the Syrian government, saying it is
responsible for the violence in the country. In 2014, Brussels aided the
insurgency by lifting an embargo on oil exports from Syrian areas under
the control of anti-government militants, whose dominant faction is the
IS terror group. Thus, in a very real way, the EU has fueled
the conflict in Syria by aiding and abetting illegally armed militants,
which has boomeranged into the worst refugee crisis since the Second
World War - a crisis that is straining the very existence of the EU.
Russia's military intervention in the Syrian conflict in support of its
long-time ally beginning on September 30 has transformed the dynamic. Russia's
intervention, along with that of Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah
resistance movement, is the only lawful foreign contingency in the
five-year-old war, because it has been requested and approved by the
Syrian government.
Russian cruise missiles launched at ISIS sites in Syria from the Caspian Sea in October 2015
All other foreign interventions in Syria from the United States and
EU members, Britain, France and Germany, are in violation of
international law. Russia's intense aerial bombardment against all
illegally armed militants, including the IS and Al Nusra Front, is not
encumbered with the false dichotomy articulated by the US-led military
coalition, which disingenuously divides militants into extremists and
moderates. In three months of Russian aerial operations, the losses
suffered by anti-government militants in Syria have been much greater
than during 16 months of bombing by the US-led coalition. That is
because Russia is working in close liaison with the Syrian Arab Army,
which is now making sweeping ground advances. Also, the US and its
allies are accused of not being fully committed to combating terrorist
groups in Syria, because these militants are at the same time being used
by Washington and its partners as proxy forces to illegally achieve
regime change in Syria.
The
US, Britain and France have reportedly supplied weapons to so-called
"moderate rebels" only for these weapons and indeed fighters to end up
with the known extremist brigades of IS and Al Nusra. Saudi Arabia and
Qatar have also funded Islamist networks, such as Jaish al Fatah and
Ahrar al Shams, which are known to be involved with IS and Al Nusra.
Russia's dramatic intervention in Syria has exposed what can only be
described as a charade in which the US, European powers and their
regional allies have been involved in trying to destroy a sovereign
country through covertly supporting an array of illegally armed
mercenary networks.
A central part of the charade is how NATO member and EU aspirant Turkey
has been involved in smuggling oil and weapons across the Syrian border.
Russia's concerted airstrikes have exposed the Turkish connection to
the Western-backed illegal regime-change operation in Syria, and no
doubt that was a factor in why Turkish fighter jets shot down a Russian
warplane on November 24.
Trump and the American descent into fascism
There were several other significant developments this year. The
emergence of billionaire property magnate Donald Trump as US
presidential contender marks the full outward degeneration of American
politics, whereby demagoguery, racism and fascism have entered into
mainstream public discourse. This is while US police violence
against African-Americans and other minorities reaches epidemic
proportions; and federal state powers of surveillance and arrest
continued to erode civil rights.
Black Lives Matter protest in NYC, December 2015
US-backed aggression in Yemen
A foreign war of aggression on Yemen by a US-backed military coalition
of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states demonstrated a descent into
lawlessness, where the United Nations appears more impotent than ever to
uphold international law. Thousands of Yemeni civilians have
been slaughtered by US-supported bombardment on residential areas
lasting nine months and counting, yet Western media have largely
overlooked those crimes, focusing instead on allegations of violations
against civilians by Russian warplanes in Syria.
Parts of Yemen have been obliterated by the House of Saud's US-UK and French weapons
Nuclear deal with Iran... based on fake allegations
The conclusion in July of the P5+1 nuclear deal between Iran and the
world powers was hailed as a triumph of diplomacy by US President Barack
Obama. Of lesser note in the Western media was the decision by the UN
nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, to terminate its 10-year investigation into
alleged Iranian nuclear weapons development. The IAEA said it had
concluded there was no evidence of any Iranian activity to build a
nuclear bomb. That means 10 years of Western claims against Iran have
been trumped-up and the rationale for crippling Western-imposed economic
sanctions on Iran is likewise null and void. So when are Washington and
its European allies going to compensate Iran with billions of dollars
for damage inflicted for no legal reason on its economy and nation's
health?
US provocation towards China
Go ahead, try to provoke us. If it weren't for the fact that you're crazy enough to use nukes, we'd crush you in a conventional war.
With
so much apparently going in the news, the tensions between the US and
China have probably not received the attention deserved. Nevertheless,
these tensions are truly alarming. The US has made several provocative
military intrusions on China's territorial claims in the South China
Sea, the latest one being a B-52 bomber that "accidentally" made a
flyover. It is noteworthy that the US aggression came only weeks and
months after China's President Xi Jinping made his first-ever state
visit to the US earlier this year. President Obama may say the
US welcomes "the peaceful rise of China". But all the indications are
that the US is doing everything to antagonize Beijing and to thwart its
perceived global power status.
This year, the US Pentagon nominated China and Russia as primary "national security threats".
This is while the US ratchets up gratuitous tensions with both
countries in the South China Sea and through NATO expansion around
Russian territory. NATO's enlisting of former Soviet country Montenegro
in the Balkans as its newest member is further testimony to the
relentless expansion of the US-led military alliance since the end of
the Cold War nearly 25 years ago - in flagrant contradiction of past
agreements with Moscow not to let NATO encroach on Russian interests.
Putin speaks truth to power
Yet the year ends with the US and its European allies slapping more
economic sanctions on Russia over alleged infringements in Ukraine, when
conflict in the latter country is clearly, and provably, a result of
the kind of Western interference that Putin highlighted at the UN.
Putin made a seminal speech at the UN General Assembly in September when
he clearly called out rogue powers who have trashed international law
with illegal military, political and economic interventions overseas.
The deterioration of legal standards, sovereignty and explosion of
conflicts and terrorism in many parts of the world can be directly
attributed to the machinations of the United States and its European
partners. "Do you see now what you have done?" asked Putin before the UN.