The Moral & Intellectual Degeneracy of Zionism

 

There's been a few things I've wanted to post but lack of time and energy have prevented me from doing so.  One essay had already been started a couple of days ago.  However, Caitlin Johnstone posted about the astonishing utterances of serial Democrap speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz at something called the Jewish Federations of North America Assembly last weekend:

Former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz made some very revealing remarks during an appearance at the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly on Sunday, expressing frustration with the way younger Jews are dismissing pro-Israel arguments because of the carnage they’ve seen in Gaza.

Shooting Starving Children in the Head is Always & Everywhere Wrong (and other thoughts)

 

SHOOTING STARVING CHILDREN IN THE HEAD

Israel has declared that it wants to expel all the Palestinians from Gaza and take it over themselves.  It hasn't said the exact same thing as consistently and brazenly about the Palestinians in the West Bank, but the "facts on the ground" demonstrate that that's the intention there as well.  Both ethnically cleansing Gaza and the West Bank would seem to make the "two-state solution" that revolting Western liberals continue to yammer about something of an impossibility.

Israel has declared that no food or medicine or any other humanitarian supplies will enter Gaza.  They are going to starve the population out.  Indeed, Israel's ordinary zionist-nutbar citizens have made festival days out of blocking entrances to Gaza to prevent humanitarian aid into the Strip.  

Because ordinary Palestinians in Gaza did not "rise up" and overthrow their Hamas government, it means there are no innocents in Gaza.  Because Hamas is a "terrorist" organization.  Corrupt, empty-headed, vermin Melanie Joly said so.  Whereas the murderous, nazi Israeli Child-Killing Force (ICKF) isn't.  

But the well-armed ICKF has had two years to destroy Hamas and they haven't done it.  But untrained, unarmed Gazan Palestinians were expected to do so.

Of course, widespread support for the actions of successive mass-murdering, fascist Israeli governments by the Israeli population means that there are no innocents in Israel either.  (Do you see how that works?)

There is video evidence and personal testimonies of Israeli snipers deliberately shooting Palestinian children in the head.  These are children they are deliberately starving coming to food distribution centers that have been set up as kill-zones.  (Doctors in Gaza say that they notice that ICKF snipers often make a sport of it to shoot a different body-part on different days.)

And still almost all Western politicians support Israel while making nauseating complaints about "rising antisemitism."

Hamas's operation on October 7th, 2023 was intended to capture Israeli hostages to exchange for Palestinian hostages.  [Taking hostages, suicide bombings, firing missiles that you know might kill civilians, all these actions are illegal.  So is killing a rich man who has bribed everyone in town to look the other way after he killed your loved ones and stole everything you owned.  Sometimes the law is just something you mention in passing.  Palestinians wouldn't have to break the law if the West didn't allow Israel to break the law with impunity for seven decades.]

Aside from the fact that Naziyahoo knew Al Aqsa Flood was going to happen, and that he and the ICKF did everything that they could to increase the carnage, ... I also don't think that Hamas expected the full-on genocidal Israeli response.

Hamas' Stunning Victory - Ted Rall's Rallblog

Correctly predicting the massive scale of the onslaught Israel would unleash following the October 7th attack, Hamas created stockpiles of missiles fabricated from dud Israeli ordnance and constructed a sophisticated tunnel system to allow it to move fighters and equipment throughout the war without having to worry much about the IDF. Hamas hoped its regional Iranian-backed allies in the Middle East, the Axis of Resistance, including Hezbollah and the regime of then-Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad, would open a multifront war against Israel, but they never viewed hope as a plan. After Hezbollah demurred and was itself nevertheless decimated by Israeli airstrikes and a vicious pager attack, Hamas carried on solo, with the exception of distant support from Yemen’s Houthis.

...

Job one was making a big splash. It was necessary to “change the entire equation and not just have a clash,” Khalil al-Hayya, top Hamas official, told The New York Times a month after the start of the war “We succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table, and now no one in the region is experiencing calm.” Hamas wasn’t merely willing to sacrifice the lives of its fellow Palestinians in order to achieve them. Provoking the Israelis to kill Gazans—the more the better—was an essential part of their plan.

I disagree.  I cannot believe that Hamas was planning on Israel to respond with full-on genocide and that the resulting losses of life would be acceptable by some sort of ruthless calculus.  Al Asqa Flood was an act of desperation.  It looked like the degenerate Arab puppet-monarchies were going to abandon the Palestinians to their fate and recognize Israel and all of its claims.  Obviously Hamas expected some sort of brutal retaliation from Israel for their attack.  Perhaps a massive bombing campaign for a week or a month.  Perhaps a limited ICKF incursion into Gaza.  But I don't think they counted on Naziyahoo cynically abandoning the Israeli hostages to their fate and testing the patience/conscience/whatever of the genuine, actual "international community."

I'm speculating, but perhaps Hamas knew that the Israelis knew about their plans, but they resolved to carry the out anyway, because (as I said before, with the aforementioned abandonment of their cause by their fellow Arabs) they were desperate.  Certainly they would not believe the cold-blooded cynicism of Naziyahoo and the ICKF to slaughter their own people as they did on October 7th, simply to blame those deaths on the savagery of Hamas.

Whatever the case, Naziyahoo's and Israel's genocidal racism has been displayed for all the world and the majority of traditionally Democratic voters reject them, as do the majority of younger Republicans.  And the majority of non-affiliated US-American voters (who now comprise the majority of the electorate as both the mainstream parties have been wallowing in shit for decades) reject Israel even more strongly.

THE DANGEROUS DELUSIONS OF US-AMERICAN GEO-POLITICAL STRATEGISTS

My next thoughts are a response to this right-wing, pro-Trump [sorta] blogger who opposes the globalist "Forever Wars."

Think-Tanks Wrestle with Russian Strategic Dilemma

In it, he discusses an article from some pro-war "defense-industry" (now "war-industry" thanks to DJT?) geo-political analyist, advising his neo-con readers about how the USA can navigate the perilous years ahead:

One of their latest pieces covers Washington’s strategic dilemma—namely, that of having to face three simultaneous adversaries in Iran, Russia, and China:

You can see it mentions a two-front war, only because the analysis immediately dismisses Iran as having already been putatively ‘removed’ from the chessboard by way of Trump’s even more putative strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, beginning thusly from the openly sentence:

America’s crippling strikes against Iran’s nuclear program in June have created a narrow window to avoid a strategic nightmare: namely, fighting China, Russia, and Iran all at once.

...

The chief challenge the author presents is in the form of the question: How do you deter or defeat both Russia and China simultaneously without exhausting your resources? He calls his solution ‘sequencing the threats’:

These competing threats spotlight America’s “strategic simultaneity” problem: How do you deter and, if necessary, defeat China and Russia simultaneously without exhausting your nation’s resources, power, and attention? You don’t. Instead, you sequence the threats.

He cites ancient powers as having famously utilized this art of ‘sequencing’, which is just a fancy way of describing the defeat of your enemies one at a time instead of fighting them all at once, with the kicker being that you start with the weakest and work your way up to the strongest:

Of course, it never occurs to these maniacs that perhaps Russia and China don't want to conquer the world?  It never occurs to these imbeciles that it is the USA that wants to dominate the planet!  Whatever the case is with Russia and the rest of the Russian federation, or with places like Crimea that are ethnically Russian and which have convoluted past relationships with Russia, ... and whatever the case is with China and Taiwan [I once met a woman from Taiwan who said she thought of herself as "Taiwanese" and I just took it as a rare <for me> glimpse at the complexities of the issue.] or China and the non-Chinese minorities in some of its outer-provinces, these matters do not necessitate nuclear war because those countries and the USA because their resolution (one way or another) does not threaten the USA.

Besides, the USA has its own imperialism to deal with.  Its own imperialism to give up and atone for, before it should attack other countries about those countries' imperialisms.  Russia, China, Iran, ... these countries are not threats to ordinary people in the West.  Our own oligarchs are a more present danger.  There is nothing to choose from between the debased and evil West and the weirdo rulers of its adversaries.

THE DECLINE OF THE WEST (SERIOUS SYMPTOMS & CONSEQUENCES)

Has China Put America Into the pre-WWII “Japan Trap?” – Ian Welsh

Here, Welsh says that the USA's reliance on China for rare earth materials is similar to Japan's reliance on US petroleum in 1941.  When the USA blocked the export of oil (and scrap metal) to Japan, to punish it for its invasion of China, the Japanese decided that their only option was to conquer those areas in East Asia (especially the Dutch East Indies) that had oil.  Destroying the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour and eliminating the US military presence in the Philippines was necessary to delay the USA's ability to retaliate.

Welsh points out that the difference is that whereas the Japanese had almost instant access to those sources of oil, it is estimated that it will take the USA many years to build up the processing capabilities to obtain alternative rare earths from other countries.  And, given that rare earths are essential for modern weapons systems the USA could conceivably be in a worse position than Japan was in 1941.

China is getting stronger over time. Everyone with sense admits that. Even before the rare-earth ban it was clear that the West is growing weaker. In ten years, let alone twenty, no one will be able to pretend America can win a war against China.

So the rare earths ban means that if the US wants war against China, it has to be soon. Within a year, I’d say.

Note that this isn’t just about China. The West supplies Ukraine and Israel, for example, with weapons which have tons (literally) of rare earths in them. The ability to keep doing this is being taken away.

Heck, forget arming proxies, the West won’t be able to produce enough missiles and drones and radar and so on for its own military needs, meaning its ability to project power and keep other nations cowed and in line will go way down.

This miscalculation on the part of the Trump Administration is a symptom of the collective cognitive decline of the USA (and the West in general):

But the reason that America officials are freaking out about the rare earth ban is it really does matter. That America and the West let themselves get into the position is insane, people (including me) were pointing out this vulnerability twenty years ago. But if there’s one thing the West can’t do any more it’s definitely think beyond three months or “but China’s rare earths are cheaper, so we can’t do anything!!!!!”

A sick system produces sick leaders.  A sick, decaying system throws up sick, decaying leaders.  The USA's government is full of octogenarians, many (such as Joseph Biden and Dianne Feinstein) are/were visibly senile.  Besides the senile, corrupt Biden, there is the demented, perverted, super-corrupt Donald Trump.  Trump is the product of the deliberate FOX News/Rush Limbaugh rage and stupidity machine.  Which itself is the product of economic decline and the elite desire to turn the majority of the population against chosen scapegoats.

But even functioning, middle-aged politicians remain stupidly wedded to their garbage culture of oligarchy and genocide.  Despite decades of failure and subsequent decline both of Canada's mainstream parties push for deregulation, tax-cuts for billionaires, slashing of public services, privatization, wars and genocide.  I'm convinced now that the stupid Liberal Party of Canada genuinely believes its own lies.  They actually think Israel is a democracy fighting for its existence rather than a genocidal, racist, degenerate shit-hole of a country.  They actually believe that crushing unions and destroying wages and etc., is the way to prosperity (because it increases the profits of the corporations and the wealth of the oligarchs which gives them more to "invest" and "create jobs") and they aren't going to allow the explosion of homelessness and the repeated "investment" in garbage like mortgage-backed securities or AI that inevitably explodes in their faces requiring government bail-outs, to change their minds.

It's the same with China.  China didn't steal our jobs.  Our oligarchs gave them to China.  China might have done some currency manipulation and what-not, but for the most part, our oligarchs put themselves in the position they are in.  Short-sighted and deluded, they are only now discovering their peril and, being greedy and stupid, they're responding poorly.

RIGHT-WING SHIT-HEADS

Lastly, some shit-head at work (who reads Ben Shapiro and watches FOX News) was saying the other day: "When it's hotter they blame global warming and when it's colder they blame global warming.  It's all politicized."

Global warming is a genuine, gigantic threat.  And, while the fossil fuels interests can simply bribe and bully neoliberal politicians to delay action to fight it, it does help if they have hordes of stupid, misinformed chumps braying like jack-asses about how global warming is a hoax.

There is no question but that AVERAGE world temperatures are rising.  Glaciers are retreating all over the globe.  Permafrost is melting in the arctic.  Heat records are being broken all over the planet.  That these massive developments might produce something like, say, the Polar Vortex, which drags colder air down from the north, temporarily producing extreme cold in places like Southern Ontario, is something deluded right-wing imbeciles can't or won't process.

It's infuriating having to endure such rank stupidity.  All around there are shit-heads defending genocide.  Racist fucks online jabbering about immigration turning Canada into a "Third-World" country.  Ignoramuses who believe that the homeless encampments in all of our cities are evidence of a "hand-out culture" when, obviously the opposite is the case.  Working class people voting for Doug Ford because he sounds like they do, even though his corruption is so brazen and his failure so evident.

Such is humanity.  I can't really say that our wiping ourselves out will be that much of a tragedy.

Good Resource on USA's Foreign Hypocrisy

 From CommonDreams.Org:


Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US expanded NATO right up to Russia’s borders, violating multiple verbal promises given to Soviet leaders. The CIA and its sister organization, the NED, sponsored color revolutions in multiple former Soviet bloc countries. The CIA “engineered” the 2014 coup in Ukraine, according to former US Ambassador Chas W. Freeman. The US armed the Azov battalion that was killing Russian speakers in the east of Ukraine. (See also this and this.) In 2019, the RAND Corporation recommended arming Ukraine as the best way to weaken Russia; RAND predicted the actions would result in a war in which Russia would have the advantage. The New York Times and Washington Post reported on extensive CIA meddling in Ukraine since at least 2014. The New Yorker reported on CIA and National Security Agency efforts to hide what they had done in Ukraine.

Jack Matlock, former US ambassador the the USSR, said in a 2024 interview: “Why don’t we understand that trying to remove Ukraine from Russian influence and put military bases there would be, in their case, absolutely unacceptable and worthy of defense?” Matlock said the US backed the 2014 coup, and, “Obviously, to any Russian leader, not just Vladimir Putin, that would have been an absolutely impossible, hostile act, which they had to react to. And in particular, they were not going to lose their naval base in Crimea.” Finally, Matlock said the Ukrainians are “dominated in their thinking by neo-Nazis—we tend to ignore that, or when Putin points it out, we say he’s lying. He’s not lying.” And Matlock wrote: “I have been appalled that a succession of American presidents and European leaders discarded the diplomacy that ended the Cold War, abandoned the agreements that curbed the nuclear arms race, and provoked a new cold war which has now become hot.”

See this for dozens of mainstream news articles about the presence of Nazis in Ukraine and US support for them.

Lotsa links!

Liberals Trying to Destroy Canada Post

 

From one of Accidental Deliberations' helpful news round-up pages, this from André Frappier at Canadian Dimension about the federal Liberals' true intentions for Canada Post:

With the support of the CDPQ—known for its disregard for workers—Joly began a major expansion of the company’s operations. Since his purchase of Intelcom, the company has built sorting centres in Montréal and Toronto, representing investments of $31 million. During this period, the number of employees grew from 300 to 2,500, plus another 3,000 “independent” contractors—a euphemism for precarious gig workers.

Hamza Shehryar's Shitty Article

 

My last post was a response to an essay by one Hamza Shehryar.  Someone who writes about "film, culture, and global politics."  In the essay Shehryar insists that Israel didn't kill Charlie Kirk.  In fact, the "conspiracy theory" that Israel killed Kirk is harmful to the Left and to the anti-genocide movement in general, because it is not true, it is "antisemitic" and it helps to divide the anti-genocide movement.

Shehryar never explains how it's antisemitic.  Throughout the piece he admits that Israel assassinates lots of people.  He condemns Israel for all sorts of cruelties and barbarisms.  So, why the specific accusation that Israel murdered Charlie Kirk is antisemitic is entirely unclear.

He spends a bit of time explaining that Pestilence Naziyahoo repeatedly going on social media to deny any part of Charlie Kirk's assassination is proof that Naziyahoo/Israel didn't do it.  According to Shehryar, Naziyahoo is playing 5th-dimensional chess with the anti-genocide movement.  Naziyahoo is deliberately trolling when he gives oxygen to this false and antisemitic conspiracy theory with his constant professions of innocence.

Of course, if the theory ISN'T false, then it couldn't be antisemitic.  (How it's antisemitic in any case remains a mystery.  Again, Shehryar admits that Israel kills lots of people all the time.)

But Naziyahoo's 5th-dimensional chess playing is still brilliant because, according to Shehryar, Naziyahoo isn't stupid.  As I said in my own post, Naziyahoo might very well be stupid.  He might just be a corrupt, insane, stupid asshole possessed of ruthlessness and cunning.  Donald Trump, Stephen Harper, Doug Ford, ... hell, we all know of all sorts of people who are imbeciles who have clawed their way to the top of an insane system.

Here's Caitlin Johnstone on Naziyahoo's repeated claims of non-involvement:

One of the weirdest things happening right now is how Israel’s prime minister keeps going out of his way to make public statements saying that Israel was definitely not behind the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

In a two-minute video uploaded onto his Twitter account on Wednesday, Netanyahu complained that “Somebody has fabricated a monstrous big lie that Israel had something to do with Charlie Kirk’s horrific murder,” saying the allegation “is insane, it is false, it is outrageous,” and that “Charlie loved Israel.”

A few days earlier, Netanyahu appeared on the highly sympathetic Newsmax to spend another couple of minutes ranting about how “insane”, “stupid” and “ridiculous” it is to claim that Israel was behind Kirk’s death, saying he “can’t believe that people are saying that.”

This is like repeatedly going out in public to yell “I did not have a sex dream about my cousin!” so that nobody thinks you had a sex dream about your cousin. People are going to walk away with the strong impression that you probably had a sex dream about your cousin.

But the main prop to Shehryar's stupid essay is the fact that Charlie Kirk was a committed pro-Israel Christian zionist to the end of his life.

Some point towards a seemingly mysterious change in Kirk’s attitudes regarding Israel, even though, until the moment he was killed, he spoke candidly, often with joy, about his contentment at the destruction of Gaza and the killing of Palestinian civilians.

“I used to say: ‘If you, as a gay person, would go to Gaza, they would throw you off of tall buildings.’ Now they don’t have any tall buildings left,” he gleefully exclaimed at an event, not long before he was killed. He quickly followed that comment up with: “Maybe you shouldn’t kill Jews, stupid Muslims.” Is this the behaviour of someone so “anti-Israel” that they must be taken out?

The picture at the top of this post is the comedienne Gilda Radner, playing her character "Emily Litella."  I was just a wee lad when the first line-up of Saturday Night Live was on.  But I did recall Radner/Litella would speak at length about a subject that she'd misunderstood and when her mistake was pointed out to her, she'd stop cold, process it and smilingly tell the audience "Nevermind."  

Shehryar and St Clair have made as big a mistake as anything the fictional Emily Litella made but they don't have the sense of shame to simply stop.

Because the fact of the matter is that Kirk was planning on breaking with Israel.  Max Blumenthal at the Grayzone has a detailed summary of the subject covering three whole articles.

"Charlie Kirk refused Netanyahu ..."

Charlie Kirk rejected an offer earlier this year from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to arrange a massive new infusion of Zionist money into his Turning Point USA (TPUSA) organization, America’s largest conservative youth association, according to a longtime friend of the slain commentator speaking on the condition of anonymity. The source told The Grayzone that the late pro-Trump influencer believed Netanyahu was trying to cow him into silence as he began to publicly question Israel’s overwhelming influence in Washington and demanded more space to criticize it. 

"Billionaire Bill Ackman convened stormy Israel 'intervention' with Charlie Kirk"

The Grayzone has spoken to five people with intimate knowledge of Kirk’s meeting with Ackman, which was held in early August. According to one source, Kirk was left upset after the gathering turned into an “intervention” where he was “hammered” for his increasingly skeptical views on the US special relationship with Israel, and for platforming prominent conservative critics of Israel at his TPUSA events. 

"Top pro-Israel TPUSA donor terminated support for Kirk ..."

A pre-eminent funder of right-wing Zionist and anti-Muslim causes across the Atlantic, Shillman’s millions helped transform Kirk from a young age into one of Israel’s most effective gentile assets.

However, as Kirk drifted from the official, Netanyahu-enforced line on Israel in the past year, expressing frustration with onerous demands from Zionist donors and hosting the leading conservative critics of Israel at his TPUSA events, Shillman apparently grew resentful. 

Do you see what happened there?  Shehryar wrote an entire essay condemning as an antisemitic conspiracy theory the idea Israel would have any reason to kill Charlie Kirk.  But he exposes himself as COMPLETELY IGNORANT of the FACT that Kirk was angrily breaking with Israel-firsters.  Whereas Emily Litella would humbly acknowledge her error and say "Nevermind" Shehryar's falsehoods remain on the site without any corrections. 

I realize that a lot of this post is a repeat of the previous one.  But I was moved to write it because CounterPunch is supposed to be an analysis AND a NEWS site.  And Jeffrey St Clair, on October 1st (when Shehryar's shitty article was published) posted a story that COMPLETELY IGNORED the Grayzone's reporting of Charlie Kirk's break with zionism from MID-SEPTEMBER!  Even if Shehryar's mistake is only based on abysmal ignorance as opposed to being zionist propaganda, it is inexcusable.  Shehryar was specifically writing about the thesis that the Grayzone was the leading leftist source for and he pretends that he had no idea of what they were actually saying because either he's a lazy idiot or (more likely) he's a paid shill for Naziyahoo's genocidal Israel.  Which makes the lazy, stupid, narcissist Jeffrey St Clair a conduit for either journalistic garbage, or zionist hasbara.

It being the case that Shehryar either has shit for brains or he's a pro-genocide scumbag, what is the potential damage from his shitty essay?

Charlie Kirk was a scumbag.  A racist, sexist, Christo-fascist, oligarch-serving, right-wing USA-first, nationalist.  USA-FIRST.  In his deluded worldview, Charlie Kirk (for whatever reasons) thought that Israel enjoyed an oversized influence on the USA's foreign policy, and (when one considers attacks on free speech and other issues) domestic policy as well.  

Whatever his motivations were, the fact that Kirk was thinking of breaking with the "no daylight between the USA and Israel" official consensus was a good thing.  I find it sickening that Hamza Shehryar is seeking to destroy a left-right consensus on Israel by writing an article based on falsehoods and absolutely baseless arguments about "antisemitism" and "dividing the left."

It's bad enough that liberals and so-called progressives have embraced war and imperialism simply because Democratic politicians are in power when they could be embracing right-wingers who have finally soured on the Forever Wars and who have been distrustful of pro-war propaganda about "defending democracy" and "protecting America" and "global responsibilities."  To see a hack like Hamza Shehryar trying to drive a wedge between US-Americans uniting against US-backed, Israeli genocide.

Like it or not, we'll always have conservatives.

I've written a few times about the various studies that show that conservatives have larger amygdala's than non-conservatives.  You can look for those posts if you want to.  Most people who I've spoken to about this think that I'm insulting conservatives when I say that.  Because they're missing the point.  Having your antenna more attuned to threats doesn't make you inferior or stupid.  Being more quick to anger and acting aggressively can sometimes be a rational survival mechanism. [Democrats believed Trump stole the presidency from Hillary Clinton and they whined online and committed themselves to the shithead Mueller's inquiry and then continued to whine and moan when it inevitably came to nothing.  MAGA-heads believed Biden stole the election from Trump and they rioted and invaded the Capital Building.  Which side stood up for their beliefs more?]

I say all this because I think that if conservatives have turned against the "Forever Wars" because of the weight of the evidence [whereas worthless liberals and "progressives" have decided that imperialism is okay if a Clinton or an Obama or a Biden is doing it], and if they have turned against their Book of Revelations support for Israel because it just seems that deliberately starving children to death or shooting them in the head when they come to a food distribution to try to avoid starving to death seems wrong.  And God Bless Such Conservatives if that is the case.

The Left and the Right could UNITE on opposition to genocide, and so a shameless piece-of-shit, Hamza Shehryar, enabled by another useless-piece-of-shit, Jeffrey St Clair,  writes a shitty article on how claiming that Israel killed Charlie Kirk is an anti-Semitic trope that divides the left causes some progressives and leftists to believe that, thereby slowing or stopping the bipartisan consensus that Israel is evil, and, therefore, the loss of any political support for continued USA financing of Israeli debt or currency or weapons.

It was so counter-productive in the extreme to post Shehryar's stupid, ignorant post! 

[Candace Owens is a real piece of work.  But on Gaza, she's right.  And she's been exposing the reality of Kirk's angry separation plan from zionist-firsters and the lies of those who would deny it.  The official narrative about the Kirk assassination is ridiculous and to me, it seems that the most likely beneficiary of it is Naziyahoo's Israel.]

"Israel Didn't Kill Charlie Kirk"

 

Or so says some nobody at CounterPunch.

Hamza Shehryar is a writer and journalist. He covers film, culture, and global politics.

I honestly don't really know that Israel killed Charlie Kirk.  But if you want to insist that Israel didn't do it, you'll have to do much better than this!  Let's begin ...

[Belated] News Round-Up

 

I have several paying projects on the go as well as a vibrant social life.  Blogging has taken a back seat but I still need to vent.  So hear goes!]

I've decided that Israel killed racist, right-wing grifter Charlie Kirk.  Kirk got a lot of money from zionists.  Even though he said stuff like this:

The Gaza Holocaust and Global Warming

 

It just occurred to me that the collective response to the horrifying images of the results of Israel's genocidal starvation policy in Gaza sums up our society's probable response to Global Warming.  In both of these subjects we have known for a long time what is going on.  We have protested to no great effect while our elites have done everything to perpetuate these crimes.  We have continued to allow them to get away with it and then we get surprised that a point of no return has been reached.  

With Gaza, it's been pretty clear that this was going to happen.  The Israelis have been very clear that they want to the total expulsion of the Palestinians from Palestine.  They have said straight out that they can either stay and be killed or they can leave.   The latter option is problematic because none of the neighbouring Arab states will take them and neither will Israel's Western allies.  [Witness, for instance, the glacial pace with which Canada processes refugee applications from Gaza.]  But the refusal of other countries to take the Palestinians isn't seen as a problem for the Israelis.   That's something the Palestinians will have to figure out as the Israelis continue to kill them.

Bad Times Ahead

 

Reading this eloquent description of how Western liberals have destroyed any claims of moral legitimacy:

The September deadline set by France, the UK, Australia and Canada for Israel to stop its genocide and commit to a two-state solution is fast approaching. And looming alongside this deadline is a final crisis of legitimacy for western liberalism.

Just a Link to an International Affairs Canada Report on Avoiding Complicity in Genocide

 

Actually the report is called "Preventing Complicity: A Review of Canada's Arms Export Policy."  I just found it the other day and I've only read a bit of it.

Double standards on part of Canada with respect to its declared commitments and values, particularly with respect to its support for the rules-based international order and the promotion of international law and human rights risks undermining Canadian diplomatic credibility and international standing. Moreover, Canada benefits from a rules-based international order in which the behaviour of powerful states, and their treatment of smaller-states, is regulated by universally respected and enforced international rules. Canada has recognized that contraventions or transgressions of international rules by any state threaten its interests, and therefore Canada must recognize that this applies equally to itself. Canada’s stated commitments to international law and the promotion of democracy and human rights is called into question by its trend of exporting arms to states involved in IHL and IHRL violations. Although Canada is a state party to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), and despite having some of the strongest arms export controls in the world, a review of past policies shows that these controls are not always applied in an objective or transparent manner. GAC has applied overly narrow interpretations of risk in evaluating the potential for Canadian military goods and technology to be used in violations, often focusing on actual evidence of misuse of Canadian arms by the recipient state rather than on the prospective, “substantial risk” of misuse as required by its obligations under the ATT. This has rendered arms exports controls largely reactive rather than proactive, often responding to abuses involving Canadian arms rather than preventing such abuses and implicating Canadian-made arms in serious violations of international law. Recent Canadian arms exports to Israel (both directly from Canada and indirectly from the USA), despite credible evidence from international institutions of Israeli crimes in Gaza, have exposed further issues in GAC’s risk assessment methodology. The current volatility in the international system demands increased prudence in arms transfer practices. Following a review of these past and current policies, a consideration of Canadian interests and values, goals and objectives, relevant stakeholders, and programmatic needs, we present three costed options all aimed at strengthening arms exports risk assessment process and thereby preventing Canadian complicity in serious violations of international law. Considering all the relevant factors and pros and cons, we recommend fully incorporating Canada’s ATT obligations into domestic law and introducing greater external oversight of the export permit evaluation and risk assessment process via independent advisory committee.

 

Perhaps someone else might be interested in looking at it too.

A Worthwhile Condemnation of CBC's Genocide-Enabling

 

Yeah, yeah.  It's on "CounterPunch.org", but Ross MacKay's "Gaza and the CBC: Public Broadcaster Betrays Its Mandate" is a good summary of the network's disgusting coverage of the Gaza Holocaust.

Public media should provide a corrective to corporate distortions; yet Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC, has repeatedly failed in this duty. By refusing to deliver accurate, comprehensive, and contextually rich reporting on Israel’s assault, it has denied Canadians the information they need to act on conscience and to pressure their government to help end the savagery. In effect, the CBC has made Canadians complicit in genocide.

...

Reply to Cap

 It was supposed to be a comment repy but it was too long.  Here it is ...

Cap,

Many people see the ICC as an imperialist institution.  (I agree with it in principle but some of its critics do have a point.)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/07/13/from-icc-to-sportswashing-wests-self-serving-narratives-must-be-combated/

"'In March, the South Africa Communist Party (SACP) denounced what it described as the ‘imperialist bias’ of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The denunciation of the ICC as a “supranational institution at the service of imperialist states' came two days after the Hague-based court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and another Russian official for alleged war crimes in Ukraine.

The speed with which the case against Putin was lodged, discussed and followed by concrete action raised many questions about the integrity, balance and political agenda of the Western-inclined court.

While Palestinians immediately, and rightly, protested the hypocrisy of the ICC as it continues to treat alleged Israeli war criminals with kid gloves, Iraqis, Afghans, but mostly African activists and intellectuals found the ICC’s moral inconsistency reprehensible.

In the 21 years of its existence, “the ICC has not issued a single warrant of arrest for or prosecuted any United States or European president, prime minister or monarch as head of state,” protested Africa’s oldest communist party, echoing the cries of numerous organizations, politicians and activists who, for years, pointed out that Africa has received the lion’s share of ICC investigations and arrest warrants.

Indeed, since its existence in 2002, the ICC has been 'fixated' on Africa. As of June 2021, “all 44 people indicted by the Court have been Africans,” wrote Qumar Ba in Foreign Affairs, and 'ten out of its 14 active investigations involve Africa.'

This argument is not intended as a blanket defense of Africa. Many alleged war crimes have been committed on the African continent – in fact, in other regions in the Global South – many of which are associated with old and new civil wars, mass scale governments’ repression and violent crackdowns.

But why should Africa be the exception, when numerous and, at times, even more, alleged grisly war crimes and crimes against humanity were affiliated with Western governments? "

The USA has been happy to use the ICC as a weapon to bludgeon its opponents with, while remaining outside its jurisdiction by not being a signatory.

Which also means that Trump had no legal obligation to arrest Putin while he was on US soil.

The ICC's case against Putin has been critiqued by others very harshly.  To whit; the claim that Putin has kidnapped Ukrainian children and subjected them to Russification/indoctrination is false.  What actually happened is that ethnic Russians in the separatist provinces voluntarily sent their children to free camps in Russia, away from the war zone, with their stays apparently being around two weeks.  Some of these camps were apparently music camps for musically inclined children.

The following link takes you to an article that quotes from the author of the report on which the ICC case is based upon.

https://thegrayzone.com/2023/03/31/iccs-putin-arrest-state-dept-report/

When South Africa brought its case against Israel to the ICC, the USA was outraged.  But it's Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan understood that if he gave Israel a pass, then the credibility of the Court would be mortally wounded.

I think that your quote from TASS is supposed to explain to me that Putin has benefited from the warm welcome he received from Trump.

The point of my original post was probably weakened by my failing to mention that Putin isn't an international pariah.  BRICS is growing.  Putin remains friendly with China, India, Iran, South Africa, Brazil, Nicaragua, Cuba, and others.

The following link has a pretty good map:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/16/mapping-where-every-country-stands-on-the-russia-ukraine-war

I wonder what that map would look like if you removed some of the puppet-dictatorships that have followed the US lead in South America and Africa?

Besides not being an international pariah, I took issue with the arrogance and narcissism and stupidity of imagining that the be-all and end-all of international politics is whether "The West" likes you or not.

"The West" is perpetrating a deliberate genocide in Palestine and the countries with "The West" are intensely hated by many of the peoples of the world.

It is the CBC's stupid narcissism that I was objecting to.

"Even if Trump stops arms deliveries to Ukraine, denying US arms makers billions in profits, I'd love to hear your reason for believing that EU countries are less capable than Russia."

I don't quite understand this question.

This link shows the proportions of global arms exports by country.

https://www.statista.com/chart/18417/global-weapons-exports/

The USA, France, and Russia account for 61.5% of total arms exports.

Are we to imagine that the remaining countries that together comprise 16% of world arms exports can step in and replace the USA's aid to Ukraine?

It's long been understood that Ukraine faces a shortage of artillery and, increasingly, anti-air defence.

France exports fighter jets.  That's probably a big part of their overall exports.  I imagine that the UK and Germany also sell some big-ticket items that comprise the bulk of their export dollars.

This link discusses the issue:

https://www.voanews.com/a/can-europe-arm-ukraine-now-that-us-has-halted-military-aid-/7998393.html

"Can Europe make up for the shortfall of military aid from the U.S.?

'There is a sharp limit to what Europe can do,' said Mark Galeotti, executive director of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence and the author of 'Forged in War,' a military history of Russia.

'There are certain systems, ranging from Patriot missiles all the way through to spare parts for the Abrams tanks and Bradley personnel carriers, that the Ukrainians are using, that the only way the Europeans can get [them] is by buying them on the open market. And that is going to take time,' Galeotti told VOA, adding that some weapons systems ordered on the open market in 2022 were arriving only now in Ukraine."

You mention that Russia has been fighting for 3 years and still hasn't defeated Ukraine.

First of all: That's true.  What does that fact say about hysterical claims of Russia conquering all of Eastern Europe???

Secondly: Ukraine had the biggest army in Europe and was trained and armed to the teeth by NATO.  That army was virtually wiped-out and a second army was raised.  That army has also been almost completely wiped-out.

This is a 21st Century battlefield against peer technologies.  Drones are everywhere, on both sides.  Armies cannot easily gather in large numbers for a big PUSH as was the case in WW2.  Because now they can be seen by satellites and attacked by long-range missiles and drones.

Of course this has been difficult for Russia.

It is a grinding war of attrition.  But Russia is bigger than Ukraine and it is evident from Ukraine Armed Forces complaints that they are running out of men and material.

"Being able to grind another country's military into the dust is in any case no guarantee of victory, as the Soviets, as well as the US and its allies, found out in Afghanistan."

That's true.  But I don't think it's the point you wanted to make.  In Afghanistan, the USA armed and funded a reactionary, fundamentalist, misogynist jihad against a Russian allied government, in order to provide Russia with its own "Vietnam."  To weaken Russia.

Who cares that Afghanistan was plunged into decades of chaos and trauma?

It's the same thing in Ukraine.  Let us not forget the rise of Banderites in the Ukrainian military and society.  Unrepentant, WW2-style, NAZIS.  Being used as the USA's cat's paw to, again, weaken Russia.

If the Russian army defeats the Ukrainian army, the USA could sponsor terrorist elements indefinitely to continue to harass Russia regardless of the continued devastation of Ukraine.

You can read my blog to hear my thoughts about Putin, the origins of this war, the progress of the fighting.

If you disagree with me I'd be more than happy to have a respectful debate on it.

Pariah Putin Preens (per Pathetic Propagandists' Piffle Portrait)

So, Putin met with Trump.  Absolutely no details as to what was discussed.  Perhaps Putin managed to convince Trump of the irrefutable reality that Ukraine has lost hundreds of thousands of men, that it needs weapons that the USA and the rest of NATO cannot produce in sufficient quantities, that Russia's losses are manageable and its industrial abilities increasing, and, therefore, that Russia can continue to slowly grind Ukraine's military until it evaporates.

Trump is an idiot, but he can't be totally oblivious to facts.  He probably knows how to appraise a property.  I suspect he was capable of understanding all of this if the Russians broke it down into small enough chunks for him.

But I was curious as to how the Proudly Canadian CBC was portraying all of this.  It was pathetic.  It was brazen propaganda.  The only professionalism that it showed was an ability to stay on message.  A message that has been maintained for over a decade, regardless of any facts that might complicate things.  Apparently Putin is a pariah.  Albeit only in "The West."  He's been "isolated" and his puppet Donald Trump has given him a victory for reasons known only to Trump, Putin and Russian Intelligence.

The CBC had to constantly mention that Trump's problems are only with "The West" which means a USA that barfs-up leadership candidates like Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and it's poddles in NATO, plus one or two others like Japan and Australia.  That "The West" is the arbiter of international laws, and morals and diplomatic isolation is a given.  Even though it is supporting a genocide in Palestine.  Even though the rest of the world despises the imperialist USA and the past imperialist powers in "The West."

"Progressives" Who Want the Slaughter in Ukraine to Continue

 

For whatever reason, Trump wants to meet Putin in Alaska.  For whatever reason, Putin has agreed to this.  (The link shows the high-level of topics they intend to discuss.  Whether anything can be accomplished with this President, or any US-American government for that matter, is a different story.)

The hard fact of the matter is that Russia is advancing all along a very long front.  Ukraine is running out of men to dragoon into the armed forces.  The USA cannot match Russia's military-industrial output.  Not now, and not for a few years for some weapons, and not for many years, for others.

The war is lost.  Europe's delusional, incompetent leadership is vowing to purchase US weapons to give to Ukraine.  But, obviously, this plan bumps up against the USA's industrial limitations.  The war is lost.

But brainwashed "progressives" (who have had YEARS to understand the bases of this conflict and the realities of the war,no thanks to the mainstream media or the incoherent postings at Jeffrey St Clair's "CounterPunch") are still lost in a dreamworld wherein Ukraine has lost perhaps 150,000 men and the Russians 2,000,000.  [But we're still supposed to fear the Russian hordes sweeping across the rest of Europe?!?]

For them, any concessions [to reality] that Trump makes in Alaska will only reinforce their other nitwit delusion (planted by the psychotic Hillary Clinton) that he is Putin's debased anus-slave.

Jeffrey St Clair Should Hang It Up

 

I've long been a critic of useless, merely performative "activism."  Likewise, I am always astonished at the intellectual and theoretical poverty of people who have the enormous privilege to be able to have paying careers that deal with left-wing causes.  All that time, all those years, and while they've been there collecting their paycheques, practically nothing is done and, definitely, less than nothing is achieved.  Mewling leftists request information from others about "victories" because they are so few and far between and often so small that you can miss them if you blink.

Quick Note: China Dumping US Securities

 

China used to buy US debt to prop-up the US dollar so that the USA could purchase Chinese-made goods.  Then, as Trump and Biden began to put sanctions and import limits and stuff on China, they CCP began to look for alternative markets and even began to attempt to grow their domestic market.  Now, having lowered their exposure to US trade retaliation, China is also lowering its exposure to US financial shenanigans.  It has been dumping US securities increasingly over the past couple of years.

Token Outrage and Token Protest

 

So Mark "Total Fraud" Carney is saying out-loud that he condemns Israel's [nazi-level barbarism and racist sadism] actions in Gaza.  But Mark Carney is a total fraud.  His strong words aren't backed up by the sorts of actions that would reflect a proper response to any country committing a genocide by starvation and bullets and bombs.

Remember: Canada has sanctions on the country of Venezuela but not Israel.  We continue to have a free trade deal with Israel and we continue to send them weapons to carry out their genocide.