GREG MAYBURY—It needs be noted that there was much political capital to be gained by those in Washington and most of America’s allies in the West by blaming Russia for the MH-17 tragedy. The U.S. and said allies had already blamed the crisis in Ukraine that derived from the February 2014 coup on Russian “aggression” and Putin’s purported ambitions to resurrect the Soviet Union. So in one sense it was to be expected they’d seek to capitalize on this disaster by blaming the Russians.
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JASON HIRTHLER—Thanks to this artful disguise, the West can stage interventions in nations reluctant to adopt its platform of exploitation, knowing that on top of the depredations of an exploitative economic model, they will be asked to call it progress and celebrate it. Washington, the metropolitan heart of neoliberal hegemony, has numerous methods of convincing reluctant developing nations to accept its neighborly advice. To be sure, the goal of modern colonialism is to find a pretext to intervene in a country, to restore by other means the extractive relations that first brought wealth to the colonial north.
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JAMES NORTH—the Times report leaves the false impression that the fighting started only yesterday, when an unmanned Iranian drone allegedly crossed from Syria into Israeli airspace, prompting Israel to ‘defend itself’ by striking back at an Iranian base in Syria. The outstanding Israeli online publication, +972, exposes this distortion in a persuasive article by Haggai Matar that points out that “Israel has been bombing inside Syria for months.”
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What we find really shocking is not that “US leadership” has plummeted from 48% to about 30%, deservedly, but that 1/3 of humanity could still believe the US deserves ANY respect for its so-called (and much touted) “leadership”. This is a tribute to entrenched imbecility in many folks, or the triumph of Western propaganda, or a squalid combination of both.
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THIERRY MEYSSAN—At the end of [the Falklands War] war, which cost more than a thousand lives (official British figures are largely understated), London imposed a particularly severe Peace Treaty on Buenos Aires – Argentinian armed forces are limited to their most simple expression. Above all, the control of their Southern and Antarctic air space is confiscated for the profit of the Royal Air Force, and they are obliged to inform the United Kingdom about all their operations.
