Belarus is back in the news today, with stories that Belarussian authorities are enabling middle eastern migrants (refugees?) to cross into Poland and other NATO countries. Poland is extremely anti-ME-refugee and hugh clashes ensure. Hard Winter is coming.
Without context, little of this makes any sense. What are ME migrants doing in Belarus???
So I looked up what MoonOfAlabama had to say on the subject. His last essay was from a month ago.
Basically, because of new sanctions against Belarus last year, which preventing the airline from flying to any western european cities, the airline has gone looking for new customers, and what do you know, there are large numbers of Syrians and Iraqi's in Turkey still able to pay the price for a ticket to Belarus, keeping the airline going, and Turkey is not part of the EU, so no sanctions.
Coincidentally, last night I'd stumbled upon a movie, The Weight of Chains, made in Canada in 2011 making an even better case for the role of sanctions and other western policies in the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. Top of the list of those who should have died in the Hague for crimes in the Former Yugoslavia should have been Reagan, GHW Bush, and Clinton (just as Milosevic said). Outline starting in the 1980's, crushing IMF debt deliberately used as wedge by Reagan to destroy "Communism" (actually social democracy, but not aligned with US empire) in Yugoslavia. Any province that defects gets immediate recognition by the US as a sovereign state, forgiveness of debt, and US markets. Well of course this sets off ethnofascists everywhere to define their new "nation" and secede. The Bosnian Muslim leader was as bad as any of them. The west focuses on one oversized retaliatory strike which could be blamed on Serbians (aligned with Russia), instead of the whole picture--which was more than an order of magnitude larger. Other crimes brushed off. I downloaded the HD version which is much better than the one on Youtube. I've never heard the breakup story told this well, even though I've heard this basic outline (the west was at fault) for almost 20 years from most leftists I respect, I never understood it. I imagine most in the west haven't heard this version at all. The success of the movie was sufficient the producer made two on different anti-western-imperialism topics, which I haven't yet checked out.
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