Sundaymail Editor
THE unrelenting series of omnicrises that have plagued the world over the last three years seem to tell us that we are living in apocalyptic times.
We first reeled from the coronavirus in 2020, which was the worst pandemic in more than 100 years after the Spanish flu between 1918 and 1919, and then we were roiled by the fallout from the Russia-Ukraine conflict — described by “The Wall Street Journal” as “the largest ground war in Europe since World War II” — which began with Moscow’s “special military operation” on February 24 last year.
Interspersed between these calamitous tragedies has been the devastating natural disasters, with the latest being the February 6 monster earthquake in Turkey and Syria, which had claimed more than 41 000 people by last week.
Staggering!
May their dear souls rest in eternal peace!
Worryingly, thousands are still missing and remain literally buried in the debris of mangled concrete and steel.
The earthquake is now regarded as the worst disaster in Turkey’s modern history.
The world, it might seem, is living through a painful phase of a permacrisis.
Matthew 24: 6-13 eerily warns us: “You will hear of wars and rumours of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.
“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.”
Indeed, we have grown cold.
There have not been any vigils or special hashtags on social media platforms to commiserate with grieving Turkish and Syrian families that have lost their loved ones.
One would have thought that such a humongous tragedy would have galvanised and united humanity in vicarious grief and trauma.
Well, this poignantly shows the frightening ability of the pervasive Western media to control and shape ideals and narratives, as well as condition how we reason, think and process information.
We are insidiously compelled to align our views, feelings, beliefs, conversations and worldview to those propagated as appropriate and universal by Western media through its global reach.
In his book “The New Rulers of the World”, Australian journalist and activist John Pilger talks of global media conglomerates that “have unprecedented power, owning press and television, book publishing, film production and databases”.
“They provide a virtual world of the ‘eternal present’, as ‘Time’ magazine calls it: politics by media, war by media, justice by media, even grief by media,” he observed.
And it seems “the world” would not care less about the indescribable pain and suffering in both Turkey and Syria, whose populations carry the eternal sin of having a different skin colour.
Even as world agencies such as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warn of imminent disease outbreaks in frigid quake-hit areas if urgent support is not provided, aid from the international community continues to trickle in dribs and drabs.
Such relatively indifferent reactions reminded the Bishop of similar responses to the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti, which killed more than 250 000 people.
Feeding the war machine
But those who have the wherewithal and means to help provide relief to the stricken countries are just extending token support that is disproportionate to the scale of the disaster.
The United Nations has already called for an estimated US$1,4 billion — US$1 billion for Turkey and close to US$400 million for Syria — in aid.
On Wednesday last week, the United Kingdom (UK) government announced a £25 million package to support relief efforts, while the United States (US) says it will provide US$85 million.
They should be thanked for their efforts.
But the Bishop finds it thoroughly absurd that these countries would extend such pitiable amounts relative to resources they are splurging with extravagant abandon to literally keep the fire burning in Ukraine.
The US total security assistance package for Kyiv, for example, is now worth more than US$27 billion, while their allies across the pond, the UK, have so far provided more than £2,3 billion in military aid to the East European country and a further £560 million to its own Defence Ministry to replenish depleted weapons stockpiles.
Countries in the European Union (EU) are also in on the action.
Just this month, the EU approved an additional €545 million (or US$600 million) for Ukraine, bringing its cumulative support for the Ukrainian army to a massive €3,6 billion.
Such princely sums of money used to feed the war machine in Ukraine could easily make the world a better place.
In November 2021, the United Nations World Food Programme director, David Beasley, claimed US$6 billion — clearly dwarfed by the more than US$30 billion that has been spent on the war thus far — could help solve world hunger by supporting 42 million people threatened with famine in 43 of the world’s worst-hit countries in that year.
But, instead of assiduously working towards achieving peace in Eastern Europe, the West is content, comfortable even, to use all this money to senselessly spill blood in the name of underwriting Washington’s global hegemony through the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
Matthew 5 verse 9 says: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
What about the warmongers? Whose children are they?
Except for ruling elites in the West, we have all felt the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war through rising fuel prices and disruptions in global supply chains, as well as the concomitant increase in the cost of living.
What many do not know is that war provides rich pickings for oligarchs and economies in the West.
While everyone else across the world, including Bishop Lazi, were smarting from high fuel prices last year, the cigar-smoking and caviar-munching oil executives were minting serious money.
US oil major ExxonMobil, for example, last year raked in an eye-watering US$55,7 billion in profits, which is more than the combined gross domestic product (GDP) of Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Another American energy firm, Chevron, also made about US$36 billion in profits last year and plans to pump US$75 billion into the pockets of investors through a share buyback scheme.
Further, the UK’s BP also announced US$28 billion in profits, US$12 million shy of the US$40 billion netted by Europe’s biggest energy company, Shell.
These are serious profits.
And even as belligerents continue to shell each other in Ukraine, weapons manufacturers, mainly American, are toasting to the bloodshed.
Lockheed Martin Corporation, which produces the Javelin antitank missiles and Himars rocket launchers used by the Ukrainian army, Raytheon Technologies Corp (Javelin and Stinger missiles), General Dynamics Corporation (howitzer shells), among others, have been experiencing roaring business.
Lockheed Martin has even expanded its production facilities to take advantage of the exponentially growing demand in Kyiv, which has even shocked Pentagon officials.
Raytheon chief executive officer Greg Hayes claims by December 2022, Ukraine had burned through 13 years of production.
This, however, is sweet news for the Americans.
Apparently, NATO leaders will this week gather in Germany for the Munich Security Conference to discuss, among other issues, the need to ratchet up weapons supply to conflict-affected zones.
This is literally profiting from grief, pain and death.
How sadistic!
Illusion of charity and paternalism
So, Ankara and Damascus, which are also under the yoke of US sanctions that are making it even difficult to crowdsource resources to help the suffering using international platforms and applications such as GoFundMe, will have to rely on well-wishers from other parts of the world without counting on support from the indifferent West.
As the Bishop always argues, in all this, there is a lesson for ordinary wananchi from this part of the world: When the West talks about human rights and democracy, it is not because they care about our welfare, material condition and wellbeing, but they are actually looking out for their own interests, which, most often than not, are economic.
When they look at Africa, they see nothing more than a source of raw materials.
Political leaders who hobnob and cavort with the West, thinking they will get support when they get into power are awfully mistaken.
Have they not learnt from what happened to puppets such as DRC’s Mobutu Sese Seko or Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
How can any African, CCC in particular, think that the Oppenheimers, for all their chequered history, will align with them just because they believe in human rights, democracy, justice and black empowerment?
Well, blacks and those of a different skin colour like Middle Easterners are just viewed as an inferior subaltern class that can be easily manipulated.
Dr Bruno de Oliveira from the UK’s Solent University believes the racial inequality towards non-European people of colour — apparent in how Ukrainians are being treated relative to other races — is an example of “visible subalternism”, which demonstrates systemic and institutional racism.
It manifests in attitudes such as those demonstrated by CBS News senior foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata, who, after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, famously said: “(Ukraine) isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades.
“This is a relatively civilised, relatively European — I have to choose those words carefully, too — city, one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen.”
Kikikiki.
Forget it, the West will never bring salvation and prosperity to Africa, as our brothers on the continent are slowly beginning to realise.
None but ourselves.
Wise up!
Bishop out!
Online Reporter