Special—By Andre Vltchek
I
[I] cannot believe that I am writing this short essay, but I feel that I have to; I simply have no choice; I am a determined internationalist who does not believe in ‘blood’ and ‘nations’.
Virtually every major Western press agency and the rest of ‘their’ mass media now carry those vitriolic propaganda outbursts exploiting the poor victims of the downed MH17 flight. All lines of decency have been crossed. What we are being fed here now resembles what one can see and hear and read in dusty archives stacked with Nazi Germany’s mementos.
Again, the West is killing, but Russia is declared a ‘villain’, and so is China and Latin America, Iran and Zimbabwe or Eritrea; just about any country or block of nations which refuses to yield to the horrifying terror being spread by Washington, London, Paris and other Western capitals.
The world is now clearly divided; there are two distinct camps:
In one, there are colonial and neo-colonial powers, which have been plundering the planet and its people for centuries. This camp also includes countless servile client states, such as Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Kenya and Colombia. The people and nature in most of these nations—like Indonesia and Philippines—are still being savagely exploited by dint of being led by utterly corrupt elites in cahoots with their imperial overlords. Shame has no meaning for such regimes.
The other camp is one great rainbow of countries that are standing proudly and determinedly against Western neo-colonialism and fascism: Cuba and Venezuela, Russia and China, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, South Africa, Eritrea, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Nicaragua, and several others. It consists of various ideologies and numerous economic systems, but it has one underlying principle: all these countries want to serve its people, not the bankers and neo-colonialists in London or Washington. While some are clearly succeeding, others are stumbling, corruption and upper class interests still play a major role, but all are at least making brave attempts.
And there are also several countries like India, that are somewhere in between, or ‘playing it both ways’. Remnants of the “non-aligned” camp we saw in the 1960s.
In the West – Russia, China, Cuba and Venezuela are four nations hated the most. It is because they form the backbone of resistance.
Russia is particularly hated, because for one hundred years it stood against and defeated Western Fascism, then shortly thereafter helped to liberate dozens of nations from European colonialism.
My good friend, Artem Kirpichenok, one of the leading Russian historians; a Jew who lived in Israel for 15 years, but decided to return to his native St. Petersburg after becoming disillusioned with racism and the institutionalized discrimination of the minorities living in the Jewish State, once clarified the issue:
“Nazi Germany, the same as England, USA and France, was based on a racist and colonialist mindset, widely accepted principles among the Western bourgeoisie in the 1930s. Hitler was building his empire in Eastern Europe on the British colonial design in India. Nazi racial theories did not differ too much from the racism in the US South or from the racial theories of French, Belgian, British or Dutch empires implemented in the colonies. The collapse of the Third Reich hit hard on all those ideals of colonialism and racism. And the Soviet Union was mainly to ‘blame’ for that collapse. The ideological basis of the European dominance over Asia, Africa and Latin America had been damaged. That could of course never be forgiven.”
What we see now is the 6th time that the Russian people are being attacked by the West, in just a short historic span of one hundred years!
II
[R]ussia was invaded during the WWI, by German troops. Then, after the greatest revolution in the modern era (October Revolution of 1917), the UK, France and later US, crossed Russian borders (1918) and occupied cities like Vladivostok and Arkhangelsk. Involved were also Canadian and Australian soldiers. By then, the Czechoslovak ‘Legions’ were already plundering and raping all along Trans Siberian Railroad since 1917. President Wilson, who had deviously sent the troops to aid in the multi-nation anti-communist push and to ensure that American investors—in case of chaos—had a share of Siberia’s rich natural resources, did not withdraw the American troops until 1920.
Later came the WWII, and around 26 million Soviet people (mainly Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians) died while fighting and defeating Nazism. This was the equivalent of the population of Texas and California combined at the time. The Soviets were not only fighting Germans, but also countless complex plots from London, Paris and Washington, to destroy both Germany and the Soviet Union in one go.
Decades later, Brzezinski, Kissinger and others worked hard to create scenarios—a trap, Brzezinski himself admitted, that would drag the Soviet Union into Afghanistan, and exhaust it there, financially and mentally. The idea was to give the Soviet Union its “own Vietnam.” In Afghanistan, the Soviet Union was fought and mortally wounded by jihadi cadres, including Mujahidin, financed and trained by the United States and the rest of the West, as well as by then close allies of the West –Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
The final blow came in 1989, when both the United Sates and Europe outrageously fooled, outmaneuvered and humiliated a totally and inexplicably naive Soviet leader – Mikhail Gorbachev, who then moved to dissolve the Soviet Union. (1) A few years later, under the leadership of a vicious degenerate, traitor and alcoholic, Boris Yeltsin, the West had managed to implement ‘the Indonesian scenario’ (1965) – Russia was ruined financially, with thousands of members of the opposition murdered, the Parliament (Russian White House) bombed, and the social safety net dismantled. That great country –the Soviet Union – had fallen apart, or, more precisely, been destroyed, from outside.
In the mid 90’s I witnessed top Soviet academics selling their books, their valuable libraries, in the freezing cold, at the entrances to the underground Metro system, in the city of Novosibirsk. Eventually, academics left, most of those from Tomsk to Argentina, and those from Novosibirsk to Brazil. Pensioners all over the country were dying from hunger and cold.
That is exactly what the West wanted – to turn their ‘biggest obstacle to absolute domination of the world’ – into some banana republic, even if the country never had single banana!
*
Russia suffered enormously from the Western onslaught throughout the history. And so did China, of course, which was colonized and humiliated by French and British invaders. So were all Latin American countries, and Iran, Korea, South Africa…The list is long and most of you know it well.
The blood spilled in the fight for freedom amalgamates today’s coalition against the Western regime, and against the most terrible ills of the world that Western countries clearly symbolize – racism, fascism, and colonialism. And capitalism, of course, the fount of unending inequality for humans and ruination for the natural world.
Russia is strong again, and it is standing tall, working closely with Communist China and Cuba (it just forgave Cuba a 35 billion dollar debt), with Venezuela and Uruguay, with most progressive nations and movements all over the world.
It is far from perfect, we understand, and although President Putin has restored and implemented many social policies, it is still far from being ‘socialist’. It may be again, in the near future, but even this is not the point, right now.
Words of enlightened Russian ruler, Alexandr Nevsky are what is really ‘the bottom line’: “Go tell all in foreign lands that Russia lives! Those who come to us in peace will be welcome as a guest. But those who come to us sword in hand will die by the sword! On that Russia stands and forever will it stand!”
That’s how it is, and that is how it should be, damn it!
*
Russia made concessions. It went too far making them, I believe. If sanctions continue, it should impose reciprocal sanctions against the West. And so on.
If Russian people in Ukraine will go on being murdered in what is clearly becoming a horrendous campaign of ethnic cleansing, Russia should fight and defend them.
Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Palestine – all are bleeding, destroyed, ruined by Western terror and its inevitable accompaniment, mendacious, pervasive, cynical propaganda. Ukraine is next. In fact she is already well on the road to perdition.
Enough.
Who downed Boeing 777; MH17, is unclear. Who is responsible for the tragedy, is obvious – those who destabilized and destroyed Ukraine and overthrew its government – EU and the United States.
Russia never seeks wars. Now its people are dying again, but the ‘big bear’ is still calm, reasoning with the West, trying to appeal to human logic and decency.
Russia is a huge but peaceful nation. But do not push it to the edge. When attacked, it fights as no other country on earth. And it never loses. Do not provoke it! Go home. Stop killing innocent Russian people… You already did, millions and millions. You killed almost an entire family of mine, too, during the siege of Leningrad; even my mother – just a baby then – survived by miracle.
Do not come close to Russia with swords in your hands! Or you will face the brave Russian people and, most likely, the Internationalist Brigades.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. The result is his latest book: “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. ‘Pluto’ published his discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. His critically acclaimed political novel Point of No Return is re-edited and available. Oceania is his book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and the market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. His feature documentary, “Rwanda Gambit” is about Rwandan history and the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.
NOTES
(1) The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) ceased to exist on 26 December 1991 by declaration no. 142-H of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union,[1] acknowledging the independence of the twelve republics of the Soviet Union, and creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). On the previous day, 25 December 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned, declaring his office extinct, and handed over the Soviet nuclear missile launching codes to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. That same evening at 7:32 P.M. the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the Russian tricolor.