It’s a choice we’re making…

It’s hard not to feel sorry for Michael Jackson sometimes. Not, mind you, that I was ever much of a fan myself – at least, not of his solo career (though I do have a soft spot for the Jackson Five. Who doesn’t?). But when the chips are down, it remains a fact that no better dancer ever moon-walked this earth than the man who went on to be known as ‘Wacko Jacko’. And because (let’s face it) there is nothing – but NOTHING – more important in this world than a spot of dancing, Michael Jackson may yet be remembered as the single most important human being in world history.

There. Been meaning to say that for years. I feel so much better now…

But like I said, it’s hard not to also feel sorry for Michael Jackson. Leaving aside the fact that he is dead – and that he died under such bizarrely pathetic circumstances, too – the sad truth is that his entire legacy has been hijacked and mutilated beyond recognition. And this week we were treated to a truly grotesque and spectacular reminder of exactly how and by whom this heinous crime was committed.

Last Wednesday, the foreign ministers of the NATO countries met in Antalya, southern Turkey, to discuss strategies for dealing with Russia in the wake of the Ukraine crisis. Not exactly the sort of thing you’d associate with Michael Jackson, now is it? Yet somehow, the ghost of Wacko Jacko managed to put in an appearance all the same.

At the end of what must have been a very boozy dinner, the military commanders and political bigwigs of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation all stood up for a spot of impromptu drunken karaoke. And you’ll never guess what song they chose for this bizarre end to a military convention. Yep, that’s right: ‘We Are the World’: that sugary, honey-coated peace’n’love anthem composed by Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie to raise money for the victims of the Ethiopian famine in 1985.

It was, in a nutshell, the scariest five minutes of video footage I have ever seen: almost straight out of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Dr Strangelove, Or How I Learnt To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’. There they all were, arguably the most powerful and influential people in the world… some in suits and ties, others in military uniforms and bedecked in medals… all drunk as skunks, holding hands and swaying precariously on stage to an almost farcically tuneless chorus of: 

“We are the world, we are the children…We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving…”

Yikes! And you don’t even have to appreciate the overwhelming irony in the song choice – more of which in a moment – to feel decidedly uncomfortable watching that clip. It was like a compilation of every embarrassing wedding moment you’ve ever witnessed or heard of – like when the in-laws hit the dance floor after one or two whiskies too many… or when the father of the bride bursts into an overly emotional rendition of Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’… all rolled into one. 

Only much, much worse. In fact, not even Rowan Atkinson’s performance in Four Weddings and a Funeral could possibly match this surreal spectacle for sheer cringe-worthiness and shudder. For yes, it is undeniably embarrassing when drunken relatives make complete pillocks of themselves at a wedding. But at the same time, it’s also kind of understandable. 

Weddings are, after all, things to be celebrated. They are a venue for mirth, festivity and – sure, why not? – a little alcoholic stoogery, too. Dancing and singing are both an accepted part of that package… no matter how badly one dances or sings. Heck: if I ever get married, you can rest assured there will be murder and mayhem on the dance floor afterwards. Scary stuff. In fact, I might have to find myself a bride just to have an excuse for that John Travolta impersonation I’ve always dreamed of…

But this? This was hardly a wedding reception, you know. And there wasn’t much to celebrate, either. Quite the contrary: this was a high-level, urgent military convention aimed at taking intensely delicate decisions at a time when World War 3 hasn’t seemed closer since the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

As for the people we saw making complete pillocks of themselves on that podium… well, they have their collective fingers on the Big Red Button. How reassuring is that? All it takes is for one of them to put a foot wrong (as they all did at several moments on that video) and… Ker-BOOM. It’s sayonara in two micro-seconds…

Meanwhile, dancing and singing are not exactly an accepted part of this particular package for other reasons, too. As you may imagine, the foreign ministers of NATO countries did not gather in Antalya to discuss Michael Jackson’s greatest hits. They met to discuss the ongoing tensions with Russia... and one thing that emerged from the meeting was an agreement to forge special relations with two non-NATO countries – Sweden and Finland – through an exchange of intelligence and ‘more military exercises’.

This is how it was described in EuroActiv: “Sweden and Finland, neither of which belong to the US-led alliance, have been alarmed by increased Russian military activity in the Baltic Sea and by Moscow’s actions in Ukraine… 

“The Russian Foreign Ministry said last month that moves by Finland and Sweden towards closer relations with NATO were of ‘special concern’…”

Oh, and there have already been covert military entanglements between the two Scandinavian countries and Russia: “The Finnish military fired underwater depth charges last month as a warning against a suspected [Russian] submarine while Sweden launched a major hunt for a suspected Russian submarine in its waters last year…”

This, then, is the backdrop against which NATO’s leaders all got plastered and sang the quintessential pacifist, anti-war anthem last Wednesday. It was the prelude to a sudden deepening of an already dangerously precarious cold war with Russia. 

Yet this is only a small part of the truly devastating irony behind the choice of precisely that song. When Michael Jackson teamed up with Lionel Ritchie to write that song in 1985, the declared aim was to raise money for Ethiopian famine relief. ‘We Are The World’ followed hard on the heels of Bob Geldof’s Live Aid concert – which was triggered by the same crisis – and Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’, etc. 

That was almost exactly 30 years ago, when the world was bombarded by endless images of starving children in countries such as Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, etc. All that remains is to fast forward three decades, and… oh look. Children are still starving in that particular corner of Africa. And to add to famine, there is also war, religious persecution, injustice, poverty, pestilence, crime, drought… you name it, it’s killing someone in Africa right now.

In fact, the situation has deteriorated alarmingly since all those European and American artists held hands and sang songs like ‘We are the World’ in the 1980s. The number of people living in abject poverty in Africa has simply exploded since then. There have been genocides in Rwanda, Burundi, Darfur, and elsewhere. Somalia alone has suffered consistent famine and drought over the past 20 years.

So not only did the combined efforts of all those singers, songwriters and artists fail in their declared objective to alleviate the suffering of so many people in that continent… but it seems we have somehow managed to achieve the clean opposite result. More people are suffering today than ever before… so much so, that the entire continent of Africa seems to be de-peopling itself, with thousands upon thousands fleeing their homelands to pursue the often fatal dream of a better life in Europe.

And this is why I found the video of those NATO bigwigs so utterly terrifying. Among the VIPs who can be seen (and heard) bawling ‘We Are The World, We Are The Children’ is a certain Federica Mogherini: the EU’s chief foreign and security policy coordinator, and special envoy to NATO.

And what was Mogherini’s response to the ongoing refugee crisis in the Mediterranean? What is her grand strategy to address the root causes of a phenomenon which drives countless numbers of people to abandon their home countries out of sheer desperation?  

Simple. She intends to bomb Libya. Just days before her Michael Jackson/Lionel Ritchie impersonation in Antalya, Turkey, Federica Mogherini addressed the United Nations Security Council to secure international backing for a military campaign against specific targets in Libya… a campaign for which NATO is likely to assume full command.

This is from a report in the Guardian this week: “Britain is drafting the UN security council resolution that would authorise the mission, said senior officials in Brussels. It would come under Italian command, have the participation of around 10 EU countries, including Britain, France, Spain, and Italy, and could also drag in NATO although there are no plans for initial alliance involvement…”

It’s a choice we’re making, you see. We’re saving our own lives… by bombing the crap out of another country, in the hope that the entire problem will simply go away. Meanwhile, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to any of the members of that drunken NATO chorus that ‘bombing other countries’, as a strategy, has a long and spectacularly consistent history of actually causing refugee crises in the first place. And it’s not exactly very hard to understand why, either. 

People generally flee countries out of fear for their lives. It doesn’t really matter much if death takes the form of starvation, sickness, execution or military action. The end result is the same: if people feel that their life is in danger in one place… they will try to move to another, safer place. It really is as simple as that.

So what better way to reduce the number of people fleeing Africa for Europe… than to drop even more bombs on yet another African country? To create even more instability, to visit more war on a war-torn continent, and dramatically increase the risk of death in an already volatile country… and ultimately, to give anyone in Libya today – be they asylum seekers or not – yet another reason to want to flee for their lives?

There is a word for Mogherini’s (and, by extension, the EU’s) plan to counter the migration crises. It is madness, nothing more, nothing less. But then: what else can we expect if not madness, from a bunch of NATO warmongers who do not even see the irony of holding hands for a drunken chorus of ‘We Are The World?’