In Germany, Obama and Merkel set new standards of hypocrisy

The last few days were marked by a new high in hypocrisy. The prize goes to Barack Obama, who literally got the Prize of the German Media (Medienpreise in German) in Baden-Baden, southwestern Germany. Obama, under whose wise stewardship the world has seen the appearance of at least four new conflict zones with direct US involvement (Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen) could be expected to show some modesty. After all, the people of Libya and Donbass might not have a very high opinion of his Nobel Peace Prize from 2010.

But Obama just can’t refuse publicity, so, after sharpening the taste of his Nobel award with the bombings in Libya and the drone attacks in Yemen, he found no better way to thank the organizers of Medienpreise than to give a speech on the perils of propaganda.

If only Obama chose to give a speech on the inadmissibility of killing human beings the next day after organizing and watching live the killer raid against bin Laden in Abbottabad in 2011! If only Obama presented John Brennan’s candidacy not for the Angel of Death Contest, but for Nobel Peace Prize – right after the publishing of NYT’s article on Brennan’s masterminding the drone attacks in four different Muslim countries! Even that would be less absurd.

“Democracies just do not work, when their media don’t operate at a certain level of professionalism, acting on the basis of facts and logic – and not just on the basis of emotions,” reads the German transcript of Obama’s speech in Baden-Baden. Oh yes, the coverage by the Obama-friendly New York Times and The Washington Post of the presidential campaign in 2016, was a classical case of professionalism. However, it was not professionalism in journalism, it was professionalism in propaganda of the most hateful sort. When the NYT called Trump “a jerk,” when WaPo’s Roger Cohen called the elected president of the United States a ‘deadbeat” – obviously, Obama calls all of that “real media.” In his speech in Baden-Baden, Obama urged his 600 listeners to teach children how to tell “real media” from “fake news.” Obviously, the reports of those same NYT and WaPo on weapons of mass destruction at Saddam Hussein’s disposal in 2003 were not “fake news…”

A day earlier in Berlin, Obama and the German chancellor Angela Merkel continued their campaign of mutual admiration – this time in the framework of a holiday of Evangelical Church. “The strength of our faith expresses itself in the way we deal with people of our opinions and faiths,” Obama said in Berlin.

True. The people in the Russian-speaking Donbass region of Ukraine could say a lot about this on that same day – as the US-supported regime in Kiev cut the supplies of potable water into the region. As if trying to add insult to injury, the Ukrainian president Poroshenko, fresh from his meeting with Merkel, unveiled plans to rename and reform the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate (a branch of the Russian Orthodox church in Ukraine). True, you can say a lot about Obama if you look at the way he treated and treats the people of a different opinion and faith. Millions of people could say a word or two about this – but these would be not the most pleasant words.