I thought I must have misread Alan Murdock's column on ancient history. Surely he must know that it is the U.S. and some acolytes that have completely surrounded both China and Russia with bases and surveillance technology, and not the other way round? The U.S. has 800 military bases compared with three for China. That the roster of countries the U.S. has invaded, starting, say, with Korea where the brutal psychopath Curtis LeMay bragged of killing one in six people, is monstrously long, and includes tiny Grenada and Panama, both for geostrategic reasons?
It includes Iraq where a million were killed, all under a pretext of lies, and Libya, which is no longer in the news, even though its black foreign workers are enslaved? It has attempted to assassinate over 50 foreign leaders. Has interfered in at least 85 foreign elections, dropped bombs on people in over 50 countries?
The U.S. controls the WTO and IMF and deigns to sanction anyone who deals with any country it has fingered as an enemy, no matter how that is defined. It has recognized as leader of Venezuela an utter nobody who has already amassed for himself $7 billion, and is generally vilified by the voting public. The evils perpetrated by the U.S. fills volumes researched and written by exemplary historians, Noam Chomsky among them.
But the propaganda behind Murdock's rhetoric sounds like it comes from The Black Book of Communism – written by disreputable people whose work is inspired by tabloids, and not to be found in any self-respecting university, anywhere.
I am not afraid of North Korea, and I believe Chomsky would laugh (if it is still possible to laugh these days) at the suggestion it threatens world peace given U.S.' nuclear arsenal and past actions. It just facilitated – because of extreme wealth disparity and lack of universal medical coverage – the death from COVID-19 of more than a half million of its own citizens!.
So I conclude Mr. Murdock is simply aping the famous satirist Jonathan Swift, and his column is tongue-in-cheek commentary.
Doris Wrench Eisler, St. Albert
