The antidote to sin and folly lies in the resolute abandonment of censorship. A democracy, poised on the precipice of descent into oligarchy and tyranny, can be salvaged solely through the steadfast rejection of the censor. Since the renaissance, every stride towards human advancement has hinged upon the unrestrained dissemination of thought. Conversely, every regression, genocide, and unspeakable atrocity sprouts from the seed of suppression.
Absent the heavy veil of censorship, the specters of Hitler and Stalin wither in obscurity. Neither criminal enterprise nor corruption can thrive without the censor, the shackles sustain it. Human progress correlates directly with the ardent tolerance of unpalatable discourse, however offensive or jarring.
In our era, a solitary tragedy unfolds, we the West, the champions of free expression, something we hold to be the very foundation of our democratic institutions, find ourselves increasingly intolerant of free speech.
Since 1945, under the leadership of the USA, we have initiated armed conflicts in over 120 countries. If we add to this record the various contrived regime change operations, the funding of separatists, colour revolutions, covert operations and economic sanctions, there is hardly a country in the world that has not directly experienced our aggression.
Bullying poor countries remains the white man’s burden. To be fair, not every war, uprising or regime change since 1945 can be attributed to our intervention. Its possible some of our bellicose foreign policy has prevented the emergence of other conflicts. But it’s a very weak claim.
The topic is verboten, because our record is shameless. Our media is not capable of challenging the official collective western foreign policy narrative. The ensuing absence of critical analysis has elevated the baseline level of corruption and incompetence that it has reached escape velocity. We are in a state indistinguishable from insanity.
Witness the Ukraine war coverage: a succession of choreographed stunts and ghost stories. Russia and Putin’s demise always only weeks away. The Russians short of ammunition. their economy always about to tank. Any day now, there will be a coup or some spontaneous change of fortune. When nothing happens, the hype is memory holed, only to be refurbished with a fresh set of paint and this time it really is happening. We endured the same pattern during the conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and even Vietnam.
The rest of the world has had it with the lying, they’ve had it with the crocodile tears espousing human rights. They’ve had 70 years of the rhetoric. They can see hypocrisy, the free speech protections enjoyed by Julian Assange and Snowden. They’ve seen a succession of theatrical crisis transformed into something always more absurd: wars on drugs, terror, climate viruses… As the saying goes, you can fool some of the people all the time, but…
For 24 months, we have heard that Zelensky and the Ukraine military were defeating Russia. Whilst the rest of the world was watching something else. They saw Russia winning and quietly they were cheering Russia as the war continued to deplete US/NATO military and economic power. Eleven rounds of NATO led sanctions failed to hurt the Russian economy. Rather, the signs are that the forced decoupling from the west, the forced reinvestment in its own industry and its forced realignment towards the rest of world is altogether an economic godsend for Russia. Instead of isolating Russia from the world, it increasingly appears that the west has isolated itself.
No-one should expect that military failure will dampen Western saber rattling. Defeat will be quickly forgotten. Just as the humiliation in Afghanistan was forgotten or the failed removal of Assad in Syria. The rest of the world does understands the central role Russian military played in Syria. Their decision to intervene in Syria against the USA funded insurgents occurred in 2015 – in the wake of the 2014 Maiden color revolution in the Ukraine. Russia’s approach in Syria was slow and methodical just as it is in the Ukraine today.
What we have learnt during this war is that our more sophisticated profit based, just in time, agile, globally distributed production model works extremely well in meeting consumer demand for Smart Phones. It is perhaps the optimal model when there is peace and co-operation between countries. But it doesn’t seem to scale well to meet the sheer grunt required to win a war. If you’ve been paying attention, you will know that NATO has depleted its arms and ammunition reserves and is incapable of anywhere near meeting the ongoing demand coming from the Ukraine military.
You would have hoped that by now that the smack talking heads in Brussels would have realized that the USA is not the manufacturing powerhouse that helped win WW1 and WW2. Today, China’s manufacturing capacity exceeds that of the US, the UE and Japan combined. Yet Brussels and Washington appear to be keen to goad China into a war over Taiwan.
Let’s be honest, whilst we keep ourselves busy bombing countries and launching creative trillion dollar Ponzi schemes, China is busying building bridges, dams, and cities. The alignment of China’s manufacturing and workforce depth together with Russia’s resource base and military prowess should be sobering to Western leaders. Neither the Chinese, nor the Russian economic model suffers from the requirement to deliver shareholder value. When they go to war, there are no lengthy contract negotiations with disparate globally dispersed suppliers. There is no profit-based war industry bleeding the public purse and restricting capacity. Production of tanks, missiles and ammunitions is determined by national needs.
We should welcome the relative rise of China and the non-western world. The entire world is richer because of China’s economic rise.
Sometimes, you get the feeling that this is what scares us most: Washington and all its vassal states refuse to share power. We want to run the world as we see fit. Fair enough, everyone is responsible for acting in their own best interest. Only is it really in our best interests? And if it is, why not just say so? Why treat the general public like children. Stop reflexively portraying the leaders of any country that dares to challenge our hegemony as the devil incarnate. Stop with the hackneyed us good them nazi’s routine.
Author: Donald Ryan
