War instead of negotiations?
The story of someone who kills his family, and says he is helping a good friend
by Jakob Wehrli
(22 May 2022) How can we create peace with even more weapons? This question is currently being asked. If you look at the media, the answer is clear: the only way to force the enemy, i.e. Russia, to make peace is to deliver more weapons, more tanks and more warfare. Because this enemy is so evil that only the language of force and only a military victory will lead to peace. To put it bluntly, in these eyes anyone who even talks about or seeks negotiations is a friend of evil. Which also makes any further discussion of this futile.
If one reads the daily media, one learns nothing about Russia’s many efforts to negotiate peace, to provide security guarantees for its own country – actually, as was agreed in the Minsk Agreements between the West, Ukraine and Russia in 2015, binding under international law within the framework of the UN.
Who wants war?
The people in Ukraine were and are hardly interested in seeing their relatives and friends perished, their children to grow up in war, their homes destroyed and their modest prosperity wiped out.
And we, too, have little interest in the fact that food prices are rising exorbitantly, that we are freezing in winter, that our jobs are at risk and that the dangers of nuclear war is becoming increasingly tangible.
Power, ambition, greed ...
Serious negotiations would be easy. Those who want an agreement will find a way. Only self-interest, power, greed, prestige, corruption, stupidity or individuals being subject to blackmail at the expense of the general public, prevent us from getting there.
Is it true that only more weapons will bring peace? As if by some ghostly hand, Europe is being driven ever more strongly into a warlike conflict with an open outcome. What began as outrage over the Russian invasion of Ukraine is turning into billion-dollar arms deliveries, mercenarism, into a global economic war that will once again affect the poorest around the world. For whom?
Hatred of everything Russian generated
In the meantime, a hatred of everything Russian has been generated, with frightening discrimination even against unsuspecting artists, indeed classical painters and composers. It seems almost surreal when a work by Peter Tchaikovsky is replaced at short notice “because of Russia”. Those responsible go over the top to make themselves look good in hasty (headless) action. In front of whom, actually? This atmosphere of fear and the anticipatory obedience are the fatal breeding ground for the acceptance of further war-mongering action.
East StratCom Task Force
Without this macabre “support” among the population, no government can conduct warlike actions – all the more so when the country has dedicated itself to peace or neutrality. Now this “backing” is currently being artificially created: about 150 PR agencies worldwide, which are linked to NATO, are working on the populations in the West via the media. This machinery has been built up and developed in recent years (East StratCom Task Force).
Their task is to maintain the bellicose mood in the population through the selection and spin of the news they pass on to the media. We are living today in the West – mind you, in the West – in a bubble of war propaganda. Can this be true? If you make the effort of comparing the news from the mainstream media with various news from other areas of the world, you will come to a realistic assessment. In Latin America, Asia or Africa, people judge the situation completely differently than our Western pale theoreticians in the editorial offices.
Ceasefires, truces, the cessation of hostilities: negotiations, if pursued seriously, can very quickly lead to a permanent cessation of warlike actions. However, as long as other interests are at work, there will always be disruptions. On the conflict in Ukraine, there are many different viable proposals for peace negotiations available today. So, who is disrupting?
(Translation “Swiss Standpoint“)