Tuesday, June 04, 2019

World’s Biggest Problems Solved

Five years ago, when Angela Merkel, at the time the respected leader of the European Union’s largest economy, was interviewed on the subject of the biggest problems facing the world, she opined that they would be the following three key ones:

• Russia’s annexation of Crimea
• Ebola epidemic
• ISIS in Syria

I am happy to report that over the intervening period all three of Frau Merkel’s most important problems facing the world have been solved, and she can now retire in peace. Ironically, none of them have been solved by her, her government, her nation, the whole of the EU, or the collective West in its entirety.

After the rhetoric surrounding Crimea died down, it turned out that the Crimeans themselves voted overwhelmingly to join Russia while Russia only acceded to their lawful demands. The Crimean Tatars—a significant minority—are particularly happy now that their language has become one of the three official ones, joining Russian and Ukrainian. Meanwhile, the rhetoric in Western media has stayed the same, but the facts behind it have turned out to be null and void. The use of the term “annexation” is particularly fact-free: in international law, annexation requires the use of force; voluntary annexation is not even a thing. Although the phrase “annexation of Crimea” is still heard in Western media, the phrase rings hollow because the world’s number one problem has thus been solved. So, who solved it? Umm… The Russians?

The Ebola virus has been known since 1976 but gained notoriety in 2014 when 2258 cases of Ebola infection were recorded in Equatorial Guinea. Later it spread to neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone, but it was at that early moment that Western mass media started ramping up their fearmongering, claiming that an Ebola pandemic is about to engulf the world. The explanation for this running start soon followed and was freely offered by its main beneficiaries: two Western pharmaceutical companies, US transnational Merck and British THK GlaxoSmithKline. Serendipitously, both of these companies both developed and stockpiled mass quantities of their respective Ebola vaccines just in time for the scare campaign. The effectiveness of these vaccines proved to be ineffectual, but they sold a lot of them anyway.

And then, at the height of the epidemic, a large group of specialists arrived, set up field hospitals and conducted a massive operation that ranged over the entire affected region looking for signs of infection. In a short period of time, these specialists developed a new vaccine, Gam-Evac Combi, which turned out to be orders of magnitude more effective than the American or the British ones. The epidemic was quickly ended. It was at that point that the entire episode vanished from Western media. But it would have been very interesting to find out more. For instance, was the epidemic spontaneous, or was its ground zero specifically chosen? There have been reports from the affected region of militants targeting Western medical teams; are they beginning to suspect something? In any case, where did these other, non-Western specialists come from, and who developed the effective Ebola vaccine? Who were they? It was… the Russians, again.

Five years ago, the situation in Syria was indeed dire: ISIS, or the Islamic Caliphate, had taken over a large part of the country, terrorizing the local populations and threatening the rest of the country. But then… I’ll cut to the chase this time, Russia intervened. It turned killing terrorists into a wonderful training exercise for its military. Over the following years, over 63000 Russian service personnel, including 25000 officers and over 400 generals, were rotated through Syria. The Air and Space Forces performed 39000 sorties, destroying 121466 ISIS targets. Transport aviation delivered 6077 tonnes of humanitarian assistance by parachute. On the ground, 1220 physicians and 10 specialized medical teams provided medical care to 88318 Syrians. If you’ve noticed, Western media hardly mentions ISIS at all any more; this is mostly because it no longer exists. Although the Syrians and the Iranians did quite a lot to help, Russia can take most of the credit. (The US can take credit for destroying the Syrian city of Raqqa, where there were plenty of civilians, but from which ISIS was mostly absent at the time).

Perhaps Frau Merkel would be so kind as to volunteer a new list of thee most important problems the world faces… for Russia to solve? Or perhaps we should start ignoring the noises emitted by Western politicians and mass media on this topic of world’s biggest problems because, you see, we can tell what the world’s biggest problem is without their help: they are.

16 comments:

Bill said...

Global warming, death of the ecosystem, population growth [poverty, the 'war machine', Trump and Clinton]

cybiotic said...

Wow, just wow.

Dmitry Orlov said...

Let's all congratulate Bill on appointing himself Bundeskanzlerin.

Thor of Oakland, OR said...

This essay is one of the many reasons why historians and cultural investigators in the future will refer to your writings in the future. We may be cooked here in the West for awhile going forward regardless, but at least there is still wisdom and humour and truth and justice in the world outside the dying Anglo-Saxon Imperial war machine nexus. Some of it even comes from right here on the inside! Thanks Dmitry!

Captain Mike said...

Dmitry,

Sort of off-topic, but I need to vent...

I appreciate your views and insights on these important subjects, but I have to tell you as an American, I'm simply depressed. It's hard to live in a country that just is spreading death and destruction all over the place. I've actually angered people (my boss and a coworker) when I suggested to them that the Soviet Union won the Second World War. They weren't having it, even when I drew their attention to the body counts, the fact that the Soviets faced no less than 200 German Divisions at any given time and that the USA and Britain probably faced a maximum of 10 divisions after the fall of France. My boss asked me "Michael, isn't there anything good that our country does around the world?" and I basically had to say, nada, I got nuthin'.

As a kid, I always knew that the Soviet Union wasn't the big boogy man we were being fed, since I am the grandson of Middle Eastern Immigrants, as a kid my father was paying attention to the stuff going on the Middle East and the fact that the Soviet Union was supplying the Arabs with their conventional arsenal (notice, no weapons of mass destruction, just normal weapons). Which reminds me of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which in the beginning wasn't going so well for the Israelis, since the Egyptians and the Syrians had the Soviet SAM 6 and SAM 7 missile systems.

Just a lot of things you say resonate and it's really hard to be an American. My teenage son wants to immigrate somewhere else, even Russia has come up, but I figure Americans are going to be Persona-non-grata in most of the world (if we aren't already).

Anyhow, thanks for what you do, keep up the good work of telling the truth.

Best Regards,

Mike

kem.erd said...

well, Bill would be bundeskanzler, assuming masculinity. But, yes his list looks like a list of real problems.

Mark said...

It's always a pleasure to read about the great and intelligent things done by Russia, especially because it is a relief from the consistent idiocy of the U.S. But I wanted to ask about several Russian films I've watched recently--THE RETURN, LEVIATHAN,
and MY JOY. They a extreme bummers, and I could only make sense of LEVIATHAN.

Cultural commentary?

Bill said...

Bill might be able to mention a few of the problems, but he is just an elementary school teacher who does not have the toughness of a Stalin or Churchill to carry out what needs to be done to help us through the coming years. He is very grateful to have the wisdom of many people to help him such as Orlov, Kunstler, "SEEDS", Consciousness of Sheep, to name a few. I just tell the kids in my class to be nice, kind and considerate to everyone.

RB Seymour said...

The problem? It's mostly the British Crown and the City of London.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=156h4LeqCNs

www.911nwo.com

Quercus said...

No, Ebola is not over – it is out of control in the Congo Basin where militia gangs attach medical facilities. Total chaos in those places

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/03/drc-set-to-exceed-2000-ebola-cases-in-second-largest-outbreak-ever
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/drc-expands-ebola-vaccine-campaign-cases-mount-rapidly

Suwannee Dave said...

As the Allies (sans Russia) commemorate June 6, it should be remembered that without the large commitment of the German Army to the Eastern Front against Russia, the D-Day landing probably would not have been possible.

Seshette said...

Right you are, Seymour. I'd like to invite Russia in to clean up our economic mess, clean out our political swamp ( not that Russia doesn't have one, mind you), and smash the pharmaceutical Kraken that has been devastating the health of Americans for decades now. Do you think she'd come if we asked her nicely? Maybe she can bring 1 or 2 of her Maglev trains which, I understand, are currently running between Europe and Moscow or thereabouts.

hole in head said...

You are constantly hitting the ball out of the park and always amaze me a long time follower whenever you write . Keep it running .

Jacob Gittes said...

Could it be that almost all of the major problems touted by Western media/MSM are really pseudo-problems, meant to scare the sheep in the direction that the elites want them to go?
If the Evil One tells you to be scared of something, and tells you go go in a certain direction, is it really wise to listen?

jbouthil said...

OK for Russia to have furnished a good vaccine but to attribute the solving of this crisis to Russia only seems to me severely bias if looking at the participation of the cubains : https://time.com/3556670/ebola-cuba, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/12/cuba-leads-fights-against-ebola-africa ...

OvergrownHobbit said...

What do you think of Solzhenitsyn?