It seems that there is a belief, even a strong belief, that the Russian government has been involved in various incidents of international interference and terrorism. The evidence for at least some of these appears to be irrefutable and yet the rest of the world has proved completely toothless in its responses.
A number of years ago, Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with a deadly radioactive substance, polonium, and subsequently died a very painful death in hospital in London. More recently, 2 Russian defectors, Sergei and Julia Skripal, were poisoned with a nerve agent, novichok, in Salisbury and, although they recovered, a British woman died. Now Alexei Navalny, a political opponent of the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, has been poisoned with a similar agent and is fighting for his life in a hospital in Germany.
Alongside these appalling events, the Russian state and its operatives have also been strongly suspected of having attempted to subvert important elections in the United States and United Kingdom, as well as most probably in other countries too.
The actions of the civilised world in response to these events have been such as expelling Russian diplomats, expelling Russia itself from pointless international gatherings and various measures targeted at specific Russians with dubious backgrounds. The problem is that none of this is of any concern to the Russian leadership, in particular to Putin who is undoubtedly the natural successor to one of the most evil men in recent history, Russia's former leader, Joseph Stalin.
While Russia goes about its subversive and murderous activities anywhere and everywhere, the Chinese government seems to be attempting to mimic the behaviour of NAZI Germany in ridding itself of a vast number of people whom it considers undesirable. The Uyghurs are an ethnic group, native to parts of China and who seem to have offended the government in Beijing. Consequently, many of them have been rounded up and shipped off to concentration camps in a remote area of China where they are being 're-educated'; reports suggest that they are actually being subjected to appalling treatment and systematically exterminated, if in less dramatic manner than that adopted by the NAZI regime. Various world leading politicians, and others, have made noises but nothing of note seems to have been done in opposition to this activity which some claim is akin to genocide.
It must also not be forgotten that the Chinese state exercises the tightest possible control over its people, often through technological means, and that its technology industry, in common with all Chinese industry, is also state controlled. Having become a major producer of many computer components and with effective marketing of its own products, companies such as Huawei now have access to, and potential control of, large parts of western infrastructure, as well as many millions of personal computers, tables, 'phones and so on. How have we been so stupid as to hand over such power with so little thought ?
As with the case in Russia, China currently has its most powerful leader for many years, General Secretary Xi Jinping, wielding greater authority than any Chinese leader since the dark days of Mao Zedong and his 'cultural revolution' that saw millions murdered. Also as with Russia, the civilised world has been largely toothless in its response to the atrocities in China, and is additionally in utter confusion about how to counter the technological control potentially available to this massive and anti-democratic state.
In reality, international diplomacy is all about fancy gatherings with important sounding names in exotic places; little of note is ever really discussed and, if anything contentious is raised, those whose behaviour is being questioned simply veto any actions against them. Thus the major powers, or those backed by any of them, are impervious to meaningful sanctions. The United Nations and its myriad of satellites absorbs vast quantities of money while delivering nothing of any real value - all decisions are reduced to the lowest common denominator, thus acceptable to all but achieving nothing of any note. Then they all sit down to an expensive dinner, paid for by us, and chat about the weather., their families, favourite sports or anything else that is utterly irrelevant.
Will the people of the world never realise that political organisations such as the UN, UNESCO, WHO, FAO, IAEA, IMF, World Bank, (and the rest), NATO, the EU and so many more are designed to served those who profit from them who, themselves, are time-serving politicians, often ones who have come to the end of the road in their own countries. They have no desire to rock the boat as the first to be tossed over the side will be themselves. Consequently, the murderous activities of Putin, Xi Jinping and their counterparts in other places continue unabated and unpunished except for the rarest of cases where it's decided to bring some small fry to justice for overwhelmingly political reasons.
Politicians huff and puff and ask for our votes every few years, usually after they've thrown us a few crumbs of encouragement, but little ever changes. Then they elect, or appoint, their pals to high offices in international organisations to ensure that nothing changes there either. Life goes on, with the elite running things, enjoying the high life and getting rich, while the rest of us are expected to do as we're told and accept whatever comes along. Heaven forbid that anyone should ever risk upsetting the delicate balance of power that keeps the house of cards from crashing down.
