United States Hypocrisy on Display on Belarus by Jacob G. Hornberger!
(2021-05-25 at 01:09:22 )

United States Hypocrisy on Display on Belarus by Jacob G. Hornberger!

United States officials are shocked and outraged over the forced landing of a passenger airliner in Belarus. The airliner contained a passenger named Roman Protasevich, a 26-year-old man who was traveling from Greece to Lithuania. Mr. Protasevich is a Belarusian dissident who is playing a major role in the fight against Belaruss brutal dictator Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. Fearing imminent arrest, Mr. Protasevich fled the country in 2019. He has been continuing the fight against Mr. Lukashenko from outside the country.

As the plane carrying Mr. Protasevich to Lithuania was crossing Belarusian air space, Lukashenko, knowing that Protasevich was onboard, ordered a Belarusian fighter jet to approach the airline and order it to land in Belarus. After the pilot complied and landed the plane, Lukashenkos goons boarded the plane and took Protseviich into custody. He now faces the possibility of the death penalty and undoubtedly is being brutally tortured in the meantime.

Alex Lukashenko, from www.kremlin.ru

The incident caused United States Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to go into a fit of anger and outrage. Mr. Blinken exclaimed, "We strongly condemn the Lukashenko regimes brazen and shocking act to divert a commercial flight and arrest a journalist. We demand an international investigation and are coordinating with our partners on next steps."

The "partners" to whom Mr. Blinken is referring are European countries that want to do everything they can to stay in the good graces of the United States government, if for no other reason than to avoid the imposition of brutal economic sanctions that the United States government imposes on nations that refuse to become "partners."

According to the New York Times, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, called the forced plane landing "totally unacceptable." The Greek Foreign Ministry called it a "state hijacking." Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawieki called it "an act of state terrorism." French Prime Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, called for a "firm and unified response" by the E.U.

Oh, what short memories these people have. Or perhaps they just have a remarkable way of blocking out unpleasant United States governmental hypocrisies.

In 2013 Bolivian President Evo Morales was flying from Russia to Bolivia in his Bolivian-owned airplane. At that time, United States dissident Edward Snowden was in Russia looking for a country that would grant him asylum from United States persecution. Mr. Morales had announced that he would look favorably on any request by Snowden for asylum in Bolivia.

Why were United States officials after Mr. Snowden? Because he had disclosed truthful information about the dark-side activities of the United States national-security establishment. That is what caused them to begin pursuing Mr. Snowden with the same degree of vengeance that Mr. Lukashenko has been pursuing Mr. Protesevich.

United States officials suspected that Mr. Snowden might be on Mr. Moraless plane. So, they induced some of their European "partners" - i.e., France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy - to deny Mr. Moraless plane permission to cross their air space. The idea was to cause Mr. Moraless plane to make an unscheduled landing in one of the United States "partner" regimes so that agents could board the plane, take Mr. Snowden into custody, and then hand him over to United States officials for torture and prosecution - just as Lukashenko has done with Protesvich.

Sure enough, facing a fuel deficiency problem, Mr. Moraless pilot had to make an unscheduled landing in Austria, another United States "partner." Austrian officials dutifully conducted a search of the plane, just as Lukashenkos goons did with the plane on which Protesevich was traveling.

Unfortunately for the Austrians, however, and their United States "partner" that was clearly calling the shots, the search proved fruitless, as Mr. Snowden was still in Russia. For some odd reason, there were no expressions of outrage against the United States government from the regimes that are now expressing outrage over what Lukashenko has done.

None of this is to suggest any approval of what the Belarusian dictators actions. His actions certainly do deserve condemnation. But this is the way brutal dictators behave, which raises the obvious question: Why does the United States government operate in the same way? And could the obvious hypocrisy on the part of the United States government at least partly explain why so many foreign citizens despise the United States government?

Reprinted here with permission from Mr. Jacob G. Hornberger of The Future of Freedom Foundation!! Their Libertarian Website!!