But lets go back to Europe. There are 2 fundamental things with Europe that never changed. Its colonial mindset and its hate of Russia. After WW2 the colonial powers of Europe changed their colonies in Neocolonies, making sure that the governments in those former colonies were doing what they want them to do and if not those governments were eliminated. They made sure that their grip on the natural resources in their former colonies stayed in their hands and in the hands of their multinational companies. They made sure that they kept a military presence with military bases within their former colonies.

Milano (Image by Federica Colombo)

That is precisely why for example 90% of the populations in the African continent are still poor and many living still in appaling circumstances. I have seen that with my own eyes in many occasions. They robbed the riches of the continent during their colonial periode and they are still robbing it now. And when the people from those African countries want to escape their poverty and bleak future and find new hope in the countries of their former european masters, Europe’s reaction is to keep them out as much as possible. No reparation for all the robbing, no collaboration in bringing the African continent on the same level of technology and economic wellbeing as Europe. It is still treating the African populations as a lesser human race, not much more than human animals. After WW2 Europe set up the so called NGO’s, financed by the European governments, to help the poor in Africa and Asia, so that it could sell an image of good intentions to help the poor towards a better life. The so called development work of all those NGO’s changed nothing at all. What it did was and is keeping people helpless and dependent.

When Khadaffi started his project of a unified Africa with its own currency supported by the gold of the national bank of Libya, with the aim to make Africa independent from its former
Colonists, Europe, through NATO, decided that Khadaffi had to be eliminated and that is what they did.

So the European colonial mentality is still in place, together with its fundamentally never changed colonial behaviour.

I still remember, when I was in college in the Netherlands, I learned that Africa stayed so poor because Africans were not capable of developing their countries as the Europeans had, because they were not intelligent enough. Ofcourse those teachers did not mention that the European industrial revolution was possible because of all the riches that were stolen during the colonial periode.

So far about the still colonial mentality of Western Europe.

There exists no continent in the world that has had so many wars on its soil as Europe. Nearly the whole history of Europe is wars. Those wars finally shaped the European countries as they are now. In that history there was always the need to attack Russia and take its territories. In the beginning Russia was much smaller. Its origin is Kiev Rus which was a double principality of Kiev and Novgorod which fused together. It had to defend itself from all sides. From Sweden (which at that time was a far bigger Sweden including what is now Finland and a part what is now Russia), from the Polish-Lithuanian Alliance which streched southwards to the Black sea), from the east (the mongols) and from the south (Ottoman empire). Most of Russia was shaped by the agression wars of those mentioned above. And when it won it took lands from its aggressors to garantee better defendible borders. I will not go into details here, but the reader can find all the historical informations in internet.

At the time when the above mentioned aggressions took place, Western Europe was still in its own wars between kingdoms. But when those wars more or less ended, there was Napoleon deciding to go to war with Russia. He had already conquered parts of Italy and the whole of the Netherlands and Sweden. He wanted to end the Russian Empire. Germany was not yet a unified nation but a conglomerate of smaller kingdoms which were too weak to obstruct the passing of his legions. That was the first big war against Russia from Western Europe. It failed. Then the Brittish colonial empire decided it had to break the Russian Empire because it wanted its hegemony in the Black Sea. Also this war failed to break Russia. And then came Nazi Germany. Another very bloody attempt to break Russia which also failed.

And now we have the Ukrainian war, provoked by the US/NATO and the European Union. Again with the same goal to break Russia. And it seems they are failing again.

Europe did not learn from its 2 World Wars. Right after WW2 there seemed to be a humanist moment with the intention to shape a new and better world. But that faded rapidly when the
US and Western Europe decided that they had a new enemy: the Sovjet Union. And NATO was born. The Sovjet Union had created the Warsaw Pact to make a buffer zone between
Western Europe and the Russian border to make sure that Russia could never again be invaded by the West. Right away an anti Sovjet (anti Russian) propaganda campaign started to convince the populations of the threat from the east. People had to forget rapidly that it were the armies of the Sovjet Union which liberated the continent from the horrors of the Nazis. And right after the fall of the Sovjet Union in 1991 NATO decided to expand right up to the borders of Russia… again.

Ukraine was finally Russia’s red line, knowing full well what would happen if Ukraine entered NATO and NATO installing its military bases in that country.

Russia tried for years to get a security agreement in place for the whole of Europe, including the Russia Federation, which was arrogantly rejected. The EU had the chance to create, together with the Russian Federation a common Union from Rotterdam to Vladivostok. It was a true opportunity to create an inmense continent of peace and prosperity. The US did not want it, having decided that the Russian federation had to be carved up in smaller and easily controlled nations and the EU followed its lead, throwing Western Europe again in a war with Russia, this time a proxy war through Ukraine.

We all know, if we have been looking for it, the full scale dimension of the EU’s/NATO’s involvement in this war.

There was never in history a threat from Russia invading Western Europe. Not even today. But there was always in history a threat from Western and Middle Europe invading Russia. And this time the reason for that are the inmense natural resources Russia has. And especially the resources needed for technology of any kind that Europe and the US do not have in their soils.

Colonisation interests again. Not exactly as before, but anyway colonisation and control over natural resources.

Europe has not learned from its past and now is on the brink of sinking, like the Titanic.

How bad was everything done. How bad and hypocrite. Instead of becoming a beacon of good government, reparation of and reconciliation with the world it once colonised, Europe decided to let a black cancer go on festering and influencing all which came after WW2.
Arrogance and hypocricy, eliminating all possible moments of changing course, silencing humanist ideas of treating others as you would like to be treated and nothing above the human being and no human being beneath another human being. It could have teached these 2 fundamental principles of human development in schools, raising new generations to build a new and wonderful world for everybody. But it didn’t. And now violence is in the streets everyday, lethal violence. Because many now, youngsters and older persons, believe that they have to settle conflicts with knives and pistols, the same as their governments are doing on a greater scale.

Europe will pay heavily for the failure of its political elites and it will not be a nice picture. But maybe it will help the people to wake up and make the right choise for a luminous future for
everyone. Better late then never.

_____________________________________________

Peter Noordendorp, author and researcher, humanist of Universalist Humanism, lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.