From my professional pilgrimages, which took me to five continents, I learned one lesson: despite your best efforts, the world cannot be summed up in what is called the ‘West’, or the ‘international community’, an appellation which, as Régis Debray says, has been monopolised by the US and its European protectorate. Less than 12% of the world’s population.
By Luis Casado
To say the least, South America, Malaysia, Ethiopia and a long list of other countries and regions of the world are not part of that short-lived ‘international community’ that monopolises the monopoly of planetary opinion.
Years ago, walking through Changi airport in Singapore, I was astonished to see in a few minutes more diversity of peoples, ethnicities, cultures, languages, dialects, dress, skin colours, religions, music and food than I had ever known in my entire life. Part of that 88% that doesn’t count.
Abbreviating the world to ‘the West’ has advantages: so, you can massacre in Palestine, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Mali, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan… without any condemnation whatsoever, as ‘the West’ and the ‘international community’ are on the side of the massacring side. The Palestinians, Yugoslavs, Iraqis, Iranians, Yemenis, Malians, Libyans, Syrians and Afghans… can have their asses handed to them. For as long as it takes: the Palestinian drama is already, I know by heart, 73 years old: I was born in 1948, the year of the Nakba, the “disaster”, the year Israel was invented on a territory populated by Arabs.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, the condemnation of the ‘West’ and the ‘international community’ was total. The whole world rose up against Russia. Really? Countries like India and China abstained. As did Senegal, a former French colony where the ‘influence’ of the Metropolis is still felt. And still other countries who believe that NATO bears a heavy responsibility for the Ukrainian issue that is hidden by the ‘Western’ press, radio and TV. The latter – and I measure what I say – has adopted a Goebbelsian method of reporting: any stupid lie is passed off disguised as a half-truth, and in the end something remains.
It is time to say that I am a supporter of PEACE. That I applaud neither the war in Ukraine, nor the others. None of them. But I am not an imbecile either. The USA and its colonies will not make me forget that NATO is an instrument of domination in the service of the Empire, and that there is no war in the world, from 4 April 1949 onwards, in which NATO has not been primarily responsible. The wars of independence? In them the US supported the colonial powers as the noose supports the hanged man: in this way it increased its power and influence. In some cases, they were directly involved by their own choice, and so they were: think of Vietnam.
To construct their own arguments, the ‘Western’ press first claimed that Ukraine had little, if anything, to do with Russia. This made clear Ukraine’s right to independence. Then, to argue that many Russians are against the war, they said the opposite: there are many ties between Ukrainians and Russians. The cynicism when it comes to “information” is mind-boggling. Nothing new under the sun: to destroy Yugoslavia NATO tolerated and even encouraged the notorious “ethnic cleansing”, for example in Croatia. Everything that was Serbian had to disappear. But there were thousands of blended families and a hodgepodge of peoples who, in the heat of the notion of “racial purity”, generated a massacre of proportions. Any resemblance to Nazi propaganda was no coincidence.
I have been in Moscow since last Wednesday. I was curious to see how Russia is collapsing, as reported in the ‘Western’ press. Of course the population is restless. The Russians paid the heavy price in World War II. It was they who liberated Europe. The total number of casualties has been estimated at 25 million dead. Not to intrude, but the US lost 292,000 soldiers. Including the war in the Pacific, against Japan.
In Russia, in every isba, in every derevnya, they know the price of war. On the banks of the Moskva, near Red Square, I asked a lady of a certain age: “What do you think about the war in Ukraine?” Her response was as simple as it was frank: “We don’t need any war. And we don’t need NATO surrounding us on all sides either”. The response was echoed by taxi drivers, shopkeepers, and Ukrainian and Russian friends with whom we shared a wonderful evening in a modest Moscow neighbourhood near Nowe Cheryomushki station. None of my friends are members of Vladimir Putin’s fan club, but they still hope that his sanity will prevail in crisis management. “Because the morons who run the ‘West’ are mental dwarfs. How can we not agree with them?
On Thursday we attended a performance of a Russian theatre classic, Masquerade by Mikhail Lermontov. At the Wahtangov Theatre on Arbat Street, which this year celebrates a century of offering the best of Russian literature. Masquerade was the last play performed before the Nazis invaded Russia in 1941. I had a wonderful time. Of course, I could only recognise a few words of the even scarcer Russian I have learnt. But Aram Khatchatourian’s music is extraordinary.
Meanwhile, ‘Western’ sanctions do more damage to the EU economy than to the Russian economy. The rouble, which devalued by 50% in a couple of weeks, is starting to lift: in a couple of days the exchange rate went from 140 roubles to one euro, to just 100. The euro is also suffering because investors are fleeing Europe, frightened by the prospect of war.
My own impression is that the US, through NATO, has Russia for an appetizer before confronting China. The war in Ukraine, I have already said, was provoked in the framework of a battle for the control of the planet. For the ‘West’ Ukraine is a pawn sacrificed in the world chess game. My Ukrainian friends agree with this view.
Not only them: waiting for theatre time, I met a group of young people from India. To my great surprise, two of them are part of the Gandhi family. It was a fruitful exchange. I told them about my trips to Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi, Secunderad and Hyderabad, as well as my admiration for what they are doing in the state of Kerala, the nerve centre of Indian Hi Tech. Naturally we talked about Ukraine: they too are clear that – whatever they say – NATO bears a great deal of responsibility for this tragedy.
Thus, I could see, 88% of the rejected earthlings vomit up the cartwheels of the ‘West’. All, or the vast majority, wish – we wish – for peace to return to Europe. And for NATO to disappear. That is not what I asked the Matron – that Moscow virgin whose icon in the Taganka Temple attracts thousands upon thousands of believers – but something much more personal. But that is my own business. And I remain a recalcitrant atheist.
