Tuesday, August 02, 2016



Time to panic! There's a snake in the grass!

Free range chickens are wonderful watch dogs.  My mother raised chickens when I was growing up in southern Louisiana, and she always knew when the chickens had spotted a snake by their loud, panic stricken squawks.  Whenever their hysterical chicken call sounded Mama would bolt from the house, grab her keenly sharpened hoe she kept handy just for snake duty, and rush to the rescue. Looking back, I find certain similarities between Mama’s chickens reaction to snakes, and how the US military complex is reacting to an imaginary perceived Russian threat. This military complex includes the Pentagon, the military arms industries, the White House, the FBI, the CIA, International banks, NATO, Citizens United, the Israel Lobby and the US media, who all act in unison as if they have just spotted a snake in the grass.  That snake, of course, is Russia.  And she wears the face of Putin.  The American war machine has just picked up their sharpened hoes in lock step with their other friends and is headed to the global yard to kill the snake.

Only Russia is not a snake.  Neither is Putin.  The US and Co. actually know this, which is why their frantic, hysterical calls for some kind of intervention in Russia sound so unbelievably pumped up. Much to my utter dismay, Canada is following the US parade, grabbing our own Canadian made hoes (which may be one of the few last things made in Canada) as we go. But what has Putin done?  Well, he has not agreed to US demands that Russia should step aside and allow the US and Co. to take their hoes to the elected president of Syria.  Putin stubbornly insists that only the Syrian people should be allowed to make “regime change”, not the US or NATO.

This is a shock to the Americans.  After all, they’ve had no trouble beating the rest of the world into submission, even if they had to kill a lot of Libyans, Iraqis, Afghans, many Latin Americans, and some Africans, too, in order to do so.  So all of the Neocon forces in the world are, at the moment, centred in the Pentagon and the International banks, and are cheered on by the others while they encircle Russia and China with NATO bases, hoping to isolate the Russians by threatening them with an all-out war.

War is big business.  Just the threat of war is big business.  And the biggest economic business the US has right now is the military arms industries.   While much, if not most, of US wealth is being poured into the military and its bases around the world, the US strikes day after day on the back of its perceived snake, with outrageous anti-Russian propaganda. Why, the western media can’t get enough of striking at the snake.  Our own CBC is on a daily basis gleefully wallowing in anti-Russian propaganda.  The producers of CBC seem to be itching for some kind of real show-down with Russia, maybe like an honest to God war. If you doubt this, start listening carefully to CBC reporting on Russia. The CBC follows US media slavishly, almost word for word; they claim Russians are liars, cheats, cowards without honor or character, and are undeserving of a place on this earth. Or words to that effect. In reality, Russia is a strong, proud country with a long history of surviving catastrophe.  Americans are ignorant of the history of other countries, even recent history, and even of their own.  And I’m beginning to think that way too many Canadians have forgotten our histories, too.

By placing Canadian troops in Latvia we are helping the US in its long history of war mongering.  Latvia is smack on Russia’s borders. Canadian troops have no business in Latvia.   One stray accidental bullet there could start a nuclear war.  If Justin Trudeau thinks Canada is made more powerful by joining the hyperventilating throng to kill a non-existent threat in order to make more billions for the American arms industry then he is a fool.  So are we if we follow him into this mad endeavour.