بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
With Friends like the US, Who Needs Enemies?
News:
The US shot down a high altitude balloon on the 4th of February after it travelled across many states of the US, and China was accused of spying on sensitive US military sites. A Guardian News headline from the 9th of February claimed, “China using spy balloon drama to drum up nationalistic fervor.” The Guardian further explained, “The communist party’s propaganda machine pulled out all the stops to ensure the public opinion was in accordance with party narrative.”
Comment:
Why would a major Western media outlet accuse the Chinese media of being so hysterical and slavish to the Communist party narrative when the same and much more can be said of the atrophied Western media? The Western media as a whole suddenly switched its focus from the Russian-NATO war in Ukraine - with Putin as the greatest enemy of the West - to the demonization of China as soon as a mysterious balloon was first reported in US airspace. Since then, three more unidentified objects were reported, and these were rapidly shot down by US warplanes on the 10th, 11th and 12th of February.
At the same time, the largest and deadliest land war since World War 2 is now raging in Europe between a major nuclear power and NATO proxies in Ukraine. The economies of Europe are being driven into severe recession, and Russia and Ukraine have each suffered at least 100,000 soldiers killed so far in a conflict that will get much worse before it is finished. Why then has China taking center stage for two weeks?
There is nothing new about China spying on America, and both countries spy on each other using many means. This topic may be a smoke screen to hide much more significant issues, and this would make the Western media more of a puppet to political agendas than the Chinese media. In fact many shocking stories related to the war in Ukraine have been buried by the mainstream media over the past two weeks.
The most significant of the buried stories is the claim by the highly reputed investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, that the bombing of the Nordstream 1 and 2 pipelines was done by the US with the help of Norway. Hersh described in great detail how this attack was planned and executed. As his source for the story was anonymous, it is hard to verify, but the US is the only country with a clear motive for the attack. US politicians for years have been trying to compel Germany to stop buying cheap gas from Russia via Nord Stream pipelines. After failing to stop Germany from going ahead with opening the second Nord Stream pipeline, Biden backed down from earlier threats and he was rebuked by many Republican congressmen for failing to stop Germany. Then Putin threatened Ukraine if NATO did not back away from militarizing Ukraine, and there were renewed US threats against Nord Stream:
Undersecretary Nuland said: “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” Later, Biden said: “If Russia invades ... there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” When a reporter asked how the US would bring an end to Nord Stream when the project is within Germany’s control, Biden smiled and replied: “We will, I promise you, we will be able to do it.” Now it is history that Russia invaded, and the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged, and Germany lost the option to buy Russian gas and is now paying much more for US gas to be shipped across the Atlantic. Surely, this should be the number one story in the West! If the US blew up the pipelines, it would amount to a direct act of international terrorism against one of the US’s supposed allies. The mainstream briefly reported the allegation alongside a US denial and then the story died.
Another story that the Western media ignored was allegations that Ukrainian militias were using chemical weapons against Russian troops. Videos emerged online apparently showing the fitting of gas canisters to drones and the dropping of these on Russian soldiers. Surely, that would be worthy of reporting. Would the US and the enslaved media ignore the possible use of chemical weapons if videos emerged that appeared to show that Russia was doing it?
Despite the claims that Russia is failing in the war, Russia has mobilized all its industrial resources and hundreds of thousands of fresh soldiers to join the fight, while European military stockpiles are getting so low that the UK and Germany were criticized for only having a few days of ammunition if they needed to mobilize their own small armies. Despite the brave Western words, and Russian military losses, Russia appears to have an overwhelming advantage of numbers that will eventually result in the collapse of Ukrainian defenses and the humiliation of NATO. Perhaps that is why the US and its foolish European servants want to portray China now as their greatest enemy, in order to lessen the humiliation of an eventual collapse of NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine. Europe will be weakened and busy with Russia, and Ukraine will be devastated, while the US will be able to focus on China. With friends like the US, who needs enemies?
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Dr. Abdullah Robin