tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20224524856195025792024-03-19T04:47:43.985-04:00thwap's schoolyardthwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.comBlogger2814125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-9697035556852086882024-03-12T05:32:00.005-04:002024-03-12T05:33:36.592-04:00"Human Shields" n' Other Stuff<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipsABoUF8EJ-GPkjNqtjxmVrDMEv4DJd6DaTvyobSDN_ReRZtB1VLgdVv-Vr6en_OtaUrmlxRsuDMpEB7fywKZhiNEk4d8jzSMoJ6A6Erv_hNaZd0R7xoXJcfhUXJJcr9E2WyXlc_e2ctbbq7v9ucke6RdL7qzpM4DA5tu6maQzwTTVIwNvxo0GVvK5biF/s1500/yee1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="724" data-original-width="1500" height="154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipsABoUF8EJ-GPkjNqtjxmVrDMEv4DJd6DaTvyobSDN_ReRZtB1VLgdVv-Vr6en_OtaUrmlxRsuDMpEB7fywKZhiNEk4d8jzSMoJ6A6Erv_hNaZd0R7xoXJcfhUXJJcr9E2WyXlc_e2ctbbq7v9ucke6RdL7qzpM4DA5tu6maQzwTTVIwNvxo0GVvK5biF/s320/yee1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>One of the stupid lies proffered by the Israeli Nazi Party and the Israeli Wehrmacht is that Hamas is to be blamed for Palestinian civilian casualties because Hamas imbeds itself within Palestinian civilians, using them as "human shields." And this stupid lie was swallowed by Western cowards, shitheads and dullards, as if innocent people being used as "human shields" have been removed from all legal protections by the actions of their captors. As if it's simply understood that you can blast away at "human shields" to get at the "bad guys" and that this is just a (perhaps sad) rule of engagement between warring parties.</p><p>Of course, that obliterates the whole point of the word "shields" in the term "human shields." So, the Israeli Wehrmacht's argument is complete bullshit.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Furthermore, the stupid argument would have us believe that Hamas embedded itself within Palestinian civilians to use them as "human shields" because they believed in the actual meaning of the term "human shields" and that the Israeli Wehrmacht would be hesitant to kill Palestinian civilians. As if Hamas (or any Palestinian) isn't well aware that the Israeli Wehrmacht regards all of them as garbage, as vermin to be eradicated. As if Hamas has any reason to believe that the Israeli Wehrmacht would pause for a millisecond over whether to kill Palestinian civilians along with Hamas fighters.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrn932y0a8NNqpMjTOa83b8lR1pQEO4ciKrY_mxNuuiJRR8RXdxR6kNbmdYpsy2VaZwAFymfzafn2Lsm3TPZ_tns1z9GTN_2dAuEyIKEubpNTq1uDw3hgSkC11WLDfILwIIRvDcVTfIJlVxe67GL_eDfo2BgtLHR9vL4FiFxQBWTFtX1huQxaB8od8OalJ/s1200/yee2.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1200" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrn932y0a8NNqpMjTOa83b8lR1pQEO4ciKrY_mxNuuiJRR8RXdxR6kNbmdYpsy2VaZwAFymfzafn2Lsm3TPZ_tns1z9GTN_2dAuEyIKEubpNTq1uDw3hgSkC11WLDfILwIIRvDcVTfIJlVxe67GL_eDfo2BgtLHR9vL4FiFxQBWTFtX1huQxaB8od8OalJ/s320/yee2.webp" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From "Operation 'Cast Lead'" from 2008</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIQiZVTHleS1zLihAQzYP8IaP6geH1A8vmeHjXPuzKJRBuKInyqtrcX1xskG0ip5VxY47tWThXjxHasEFgiiq_nnzG43-khgBXfo7vYd_ZCrFxbMQ5PmSnd8AcnAZBrJsruFVgLEG1R83ibbdyFwlTHeyZBaaJHqC42eExYZauUkOpeWWA9r03GBbYO89I/s600/yedged1.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIQiZVTHleS1zLihAQzYP8IaP6geH1A8vmeHjXPuzKJRBuKInyqtrcX1xskG0ip5VxY47tWThXjxHasEFgiiq_nnzG43-khgBXfo7vYd_ZCrFxbMQ5PmSnd8AcnAZBrJsruFVgLEG1R83ibbdyFwlTHeyZBaaJHqC42eExYZauUkOpeWWA9r03GBbYO89I/s320/yedged1.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Operation Protective Edge" from 2014</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>There's no reason for Hamas to think that the IDF won't murder Palestinian civilians to get at them. And even if Hamas had thought that, the IDF right now is telling the world: "Human shields??? We'll show you what we think of human shields!!" They are indiscriminately bombing them. Which is a violation of international law for which the US-government and all of its lickspittle vassals (such as Canada) have not protested. And, on top of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/2/12/palestinian-doctor-braves-sniper-fire-to-help-wounded-in-gaza#:~:text=Palestinian%20doctor%20Amira%20al%2DAsooli,killed%20trying%20to%20reach%20shelter." target="_blank">all</a> of that, with all their <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/9/israeli-snipers-kill-21-civilians-outside-gazas-besieged-nasser-hospital" target="_blank">sadistic murders</a> of <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240124-unarmed-palestinian-fatally-shot-by-israeli-sniper-despite-white-flag-in-khan-yunis/" target="_blank">unarmed individuals</a>, the IDF/Israeli Wehrmacht is showing itself to be a criminal organization. And, again, neither Biden, nor Trudeau, or Macron or Sunak (or Starmer) or Scholz have uttered a word of criticism for any of this.</p><p>Canada continues to provide diplomatic cover for Israel's genocidal policies. It continues to export weapons components to Israel. My country, our country (if, as is likely, you're a Canadian reading this) is contributing to a genocide. An overtly violent genocide (since our ongoing smothering of the First Nations is a more slow-motion genocide) and we are revealing ourselves to be a debased, sickening people.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu5pnYjJETfnxlUtyfrBlyTObMmSaqStR170HwNZDIwl922sYk_8g-CW-VpD_vcoPfya0-OKUbJM_tSzOfaMFl01YzRd3ks8W-F5FM6-EVjXEjPUNehqB6cxSwecGMsASzcPQJjn-Ygdr2LTuk2fSF2ZREO2367gKVlECNoPalXs36vzCjcm1DpbQEoNBz/s307/yabbuck.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="307" data-original-width="164" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu5pnYjJETfnxlUtyfrBlyTObMmSaqStR170HwNZDIwl922sYk_8g-CW-VpD_vcoPfya0-OKUbJM_tSzOfaMFl01YzRd3ks8W-F5FM6-EVjXEjPUNehqB6cxSwecGMsASzcPQJjn-Ygdr2LTuk2fSF2ZREO2367gKVlECNoPalXs36vzCjcm1DpbQEoNBz/s1600/yabbuck.jpg" width="164" /></a></div><p>How in the name of fuck can a government support a genocide and then go through the motions of condemning another government for the death of one man without any evidence that this other government had anything to do with his death? What must Ambassador Oleg Stepanov been thinking when <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-summons-russian-ambassador-navalny-death-1.7121741#:~:text=Canada%20has%20summoned%20the%20Kremlin's,Wednesday%20to%20hear%20Canada's%20rebuke." target="_blank">Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly summoned him to "rebuke" him</a> for the death of Alexei Navalny?</p><p>First of all, while he wasn't anything like the manufactured non-entity that <a href="https://www.google.com/url?client=internal-element-cse&cx=000357264939014560440:icshsy4bfu0&q=https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/15/americas-puppet-meet-juan-guaido/&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwj-3dSkheqEAxWWOFkFHdTIA3AQFnoECAMQAg&usg=AOvVaw1PAVd-ibYLVuiGoMB7x5wq" target="_blank">Juan Guaido</a> was, Navalny <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2021/01/28/alexei-navalny-myth-wests-russian-opposition-figure/" target="_blank">wasn't the revolutionary democratic superstar</a> that the corporate/imperialist propaganda system made him out to be. Also, just like <a href="https://johnhelmer.net/four-years-later-the-skripal-case-is-weirder-than-ever/" target="_blank">the incoherent Skripal novichok story in the UK</a>, the narrative about Navalny's <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/06/in-navalny-poisoning-rush-to-judgment-threatens-new-russia-nato-crisis/" target="_blank">alleged poisoning</a> and <a href="https://johnhelmer.net/what-happened-to-alexei-navalny-this-time-round/" target="_blank">recent death while in custody is dodgy</a>. But even if everything said about the Russian FSB and Navalny is true, shouldn't Canada's foreign minister be summoning the Ambassador from our ally Israel for conducting a GODDAMNED FUCKING <b>GENOCIDE</b> instead of hypocritically blathering about one man being killed by a government we see as a rival?</p><p>You really have to wonder if Crystia Freeland (and everyone associated with her) is completely shameless or whether they're just so fucking stupid that they can't see how nauseating and contemptible their behaviour is.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt-Uu1D10b4xKeHl4y4HxdcgbDsJVcm95Ya9fYYAFYENZwtwvFmoPKO-pgskaAevld2HiYPPiEd722sdJADgyGVdxEi3gX7wU-llrXhV9TqnAMSlhUNS2XCodXXQ57O0fuHbZi17i0CUyn9_hyCyqdaQXYMkecpAfkQz7ar2WOoYnHG06gdasBDDVKjpY1/s1200/yabbuck2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt-Uu1D10b4xKeHl4y4HxdcgbDsJVcm95Ya9fYYAFYENZwtwvFmoPKO-pgskaAevld2HiYPPiEd722sdJADgyGVdxEi3gX7wU-llrXhV9TqnAMSlhUNS2XCodXXQ57O0fuHbZi17i0CUyn9_hyCyqdaQXYMkecpAfkQz7ar2WOoYnHG06gdasBDDVKjpY1/s320/yabbuck2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Next up is <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/thornhill-israeli-real-estate-event-protest-1.7137131" target="_blank">This CBC article about a protest and counter-protest outside a Thornhill synagogue</a> where a seminar providing information about how to purchase stolen land in the West Bank was going on. </p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;"></p><blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">Hundreds of pro-Palestinan protesters and counter-protesters demonstrated for hours outside a Toronto-area synagogue hosting a real estate event that marketed property in the occupied West Bank on Thursday.</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">Realtors and companies participating in the session, called the great Israeli Real Estate Event, gathered at the Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto in Thornhill, Ont., on Thursday — part of a group of broader tours taking place in five North American cities. </p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">York Regional Police confirmed arrests were made at the demonstration near Clark Avenue West and York Hill Boulevard, but by Thursday night, they had not provided details as to who has been arrested or if any charges have been laid.</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">The website for the event markets it as: "Your chance to own a piece of the Holy Land!"</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">Along with other cities in Israel, the website says customers can inquire about purchasing property in Ma'ale Adumim, Efrat and Neve Daniel — all Israeli settlements in the West Bank, <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/atlas2019/images/db/israeli-settlements-checkpoints/israeli-settlments.pdf" style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(216, 216, 216); color: #0550c8; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-color 0.25s linear 0s;">according to the United Nations</a>. Modiin is also listed on the real estate show's website, and while some parts are considered Israeli settlements, not all of it is. The website does not specify where in Modiin advertised property is located.</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">The UN, <a href="https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_relations-relations_internationales/mena-moan/israeli-palestinian_policy-politique_israelo-palestinien.aspx?lang=eng#a06" style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(216, 216, 216); color: #0550c8; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-color 0.25s linear 0s;">alongside Canada</a>, considers Israeli settlements in the occupied territories to be in violation of international law.</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;"></p><p>Did you read that last bit? "Canada considers the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories to be in violation of international law"! So why don't we DO anything about it? Why don't we ever say to the Israelis that if they continue to steal the Palestinians' land in violation of international law that there will be consequences? Why does Canada instead bow and scrape and coddle and make every excuse for that murderously racist, degenerate country? Because Canada's ruling class are pro-zionist, most of our people are brainwashed ignoramuses, and we're a colonialist, settler society ourselves and we think we racist colonizers need to stick together! Oh yeah, and we're also cowards. Israel is important to the USA and we believe whatever the USA tells us to believe.</p><p>I suppose I should mention here that this article constitutes an abberation from the CBC's current policy of not saying ANYTHING about the current Israel-Palestine conflict. Which is to say Israel's current genocidal behaviour. The sin of ommission. The CBC. Doing whatever it can to help Israel perpetuate a genocide.</p><p>Anyway, the article goes on about the Canadian government's stated position on illegal settlements:</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;"></p><blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">Ahead of the event, the Canadian government reiterated that it does not recognize "permanent Israeli control over territories occupied in 1967, and strongly opposes illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"The settlements also constitute a serious obstacle to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace," Global Affairs Canada spokesperson John Babcock said in a statement, adding Canada "strongly condemns" extremist settler violence against Palestinians in the area. </p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"Canada is also gravely concerned by reports of Palestinian communities being forcibly removed from their lands in the West Bank."</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">Asked if events promoting the sale of the land in the West Bank are allowed in Canada or if there are any legal implications for Canadians who purchase property in those settlements, the government did not respond. </p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;"></p><p>Of course it didn't. Gutless, hypocritical cowards. These "settlements" aren't some new wrinkle to this story. They've been going on for decades. If pressed, the Canadian government of the day will mouth its empy platitudes about "grave concerns" and "international law" and a "peace process" but then it will slink back into the shadows and hope that that will be the end of the matter. And <a href="https://www.fairobserver.com/region/middle_east_north_africa/noam-chomsky-ceasefires-violations-never-cease-47231/#" target="_blank">Israel routinely sabotages this "peace process" with impunity</a>. Meanwhile, <a href="https://countercurrents.org/petras301112.htm" target="_blank">here is the attitude</a> that they're pretending doesn't exist:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm1CsspQM_88uXdkMJAduN_r-5-f8zO-8YYpYSqkvHOdK57EvDqyXknlRn8HSiHFnq1Jfj3STeV1bp7erSLP9a1B04MSpcN3vDC-cwxRFZpYhddUVNeM8o3V1fHdpF0zIxaiOshKueRbER1pb42nLqFSZDpRYtoiyeRnfjXOd-cSH3ymcdzokWk4pi6H8u/s807/yabbuck3.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="807" data-original-width="564" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm1CsspQM_88uXdkMJAduN_r-5-f8zO-8YYpYSqkvHOdK57EvDqyXknlRn8HSiHFnq1Jfj3STeV1bp7erSLP9a1B04MSpcN3vDC-cwxRFZpYhddUVNeM8o3V1fHdpF0zIxaiOshKueRbER1pb42nLqFSZDpRYtoiyeRnfjXOd-cSH3ymcdzokWk4pi6H8u/s320/yabbuck3.jpg" width="224" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Note: A lot of these quotes are from 2012 not 2024</td></tr></tbody></table><p><br /></p><p>Getting back to the CBC article about the Thornhill synagogue protest, there's a part about the synagogue organizing a counter-protest, and there's a bunch of mewling bullshit from zionist nazis that you can read at the link if you're interested. But I wanted to point out the image of this charming person at the counter-protest:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcJJbdFOIC_wIu7BeF_SUZD_zp_QQ0TkWtGO_BY5mwUwwh2v-6ParRQl4HRot3OacMDBBKeKv4To_mzaQdCX8dGck00pOfQ59jO9y1TDMyMRj7v_YkMKx63SEyEAwMSAhUAYeBHRnMun4M6ExPIinK1qg8VEKR4HWaLOVc_op_JBjnDC61GvPpFi1U0_Wj/s1180/ont-israel-real-estate-events-20240307.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="786" data-original-width="1180" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcJJbdFOIC_wIu7BeF_SUZD_zp_QQ0TkWtGO_BY5mwUwwh2v-6ParRQl4HRot3OacMDBBKeKv4To_mzaQdCX8dGck00pOfQ59jO9y1TDMyMRj7v_YkMKx63SEyEAwMSAhUAYeBHRnMun4M6ExPIinK1qg8VEKR4HWaLOVc_op_JBjnDC61GvPpFi1U0_Wj/s320/ont-israel-real-estate-events-20240307.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>"Stop the Hate!" [!] It's astonishing isn't it? Israel has slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children and is deliberately starving the survivors and denying them access to medical care. But to that woman in the photo, conducting a genocide doesn't constitute "hate." No, for her, "hate" consists of protesting the genocide and protesting the stealing the land of the people being wiped-out. (Yes, I understand that the actual, concentrated genocide is in Gaza while the land-thefts are in the West Bank. But the victims are ALL Palestinians. And what's going on in the West Bank is also a genocide regardless.)</p><p>That woman's level of cluelessness and entitlement stayed with me as I read <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/family-doctors-meeting-alternative-care-paths-underfunding-1.7105807" target="_blank">this story</a> about Ontario family doctors discussing the crisis in funding that is causing many of them to consider leaving the profession.</p><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">A group of family physicians held a meeting on Monday evening to talk about alternative career paths because it says the practise of family medicine is not sustainable in Ontario.</span></p><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">...</span></p><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">Hijazi, a family physician in Ottawa, said the point of the meeting was to draw attention to the crisis that family doctors are facing. He said family medicine in Ontario is unsustainable because of inadequate funding from the Ontario health ministry and the amount of time that family doctors have to spend on administrative work, which is estimated to be roughly 19 hours a week.</span></p><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">...</span></p><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">"Family doctors in Ontario are paid by the government through funding intended to cover various expenses such as rent, staff salaries, nursing services, electronic medical records, computers, phone bills, utilities, and more. However, this funding has remained stagnant for far too long and has failed to keep up with rising costs and inflation. As a result, family doctors struggle to meet their basic operational expenses," the petition reads.</span></p></blockquote><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;"></span></p><p>And it occurred to me: How can Doug Ford not see what he's doing with his multiple assaults on Ontario's healthcare system? How can he deliberately underfund family medicine? How can he knowingly <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-hospital-nurses-private-staffing-agencies-auditor-1.7050828" target="_blank">pay more for nurses from private agencies</a> instead of saving money by increasing funding for public nurses? He must know that the private insurance dominated healthcare system in the USA is an unmitigated disaster for ordinary people there. It's more expensive, less accessible and ends up bankrupting and/or killing people. Is he a cackling monster?</p><p>I don't think so. Sure, he's a fucking asshole. A bloated, blustering, arrogant bully. But he's also the sort of shit-head <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8215519/doug-ford-ontario-autism-program-inefficiencies/" target="_blank">who thought he could call a mother driven to desperation</a> by his idiotic changes to assistance for autistic children and <a href="https://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.com/search?q=ford+autism" target="_blank">explain himself</a>. A cackling monster wouldn't care. An intelligent, cynical cackling monster wouldn't bother because they'd be aware that their reforms were stupid and the phone call would be a political disaster.</p><p>I think Doug Ford is like that stupid woman with the "Stop the Hate!" sign. She is a racist who supports ethnic cleansing and slaughtering the indigenous people if they protest their expulsion. And anyone who disagrees with her is like the nazis. Even though she has more in common with Adolph Hitler than they do. She has compartmentalized things and deluded herself and stopped thinking things through to their consequences so that she can convince herself of her insanity. Pure insanity. Madness. And it's the same with Doug Ford. He's a rich stupid asshole who likes being Premier of Ontario because of the power and the fame. To stay in power he needs to help other rich people. He likes to help them because, again, he's also rich. And he believes in the political ideas that his stupid, obnoxious father bloviated about to him in his youth. And he can't be bothered to think things through. He's lazy and stupid and an asshole, but the hero of his own life's story and therefore all the shitty, scuzzy things he does are somehow "good" things because what else could they be?</p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>THE END</b></span></p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-30627408652096518632024-03-05T11:57:00.003-05:002024-03-05T18:28:55.301-05:00Macron Needs to be Locked Up<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaHZVSh1VTtRoa-Z9Bfweir9ZtTMG18D8NQ58NjRxynJz8_CtSA72t8ZGIl4QbWMraRsbATTq9oo5pmJIEZR0NGn-u61Vzdv6BHGCRvUUy1MY6sF_oGPhlD-9AV-NaRcmMLavsXgzAWDCatlvQhxjHMIL-PFAB9YYpv9RfYxuZZ7uJYyjjde3svyLeZcCh/s800/q1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="531" data-original-width="800" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaHZVSh1VTtRoa-Z9Bfweir9ZtTMG18D8NQ58NjRxynJz8_CtSA72t8ZGIl4QbWMraRsbATTq9oo5pmJIEZR0NGn-u61Vzdv6BHGCRvUUy1MY6sF_oGPhlD-9AV-NaRcmMLavsXgzAWDCatlvQhxjHMIL-PFAB9YYpv9RfYxuZZ7uJYyjjde3svyLeZcCh/s320/q1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>If you don't read <a href="https://www.indianpunchline.com/china-resumes-shuttle-diplomacy-as-ukraine-war-drums-get-louder/" target="_blank">M. K. Bhadrakumar's blog</a>, you should. A retired Indian diplomat, his analysis of world events is objective, informed and inspired by humanistic principles. In the post I've linked to he discusses China's upcoming attempt at shuttle-diplomacy between Russia and NATO as the latter's leadership appear to be losing their minds. Russia is humiliating NATO, which figured that the combination of crippling sanctions and a Western-trained Ukraine would have at least severely weakened Russia, if it didn't lead to the collapse of the Putin government and the reconquest of the Donbas.</p><p>Bhadrakumar mentions French President Macron's defending his recent outburst about sending French troops to fight Russia in Ukraine:<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; font-family: "Libre Franklin", "Helvetica Neue", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; font-family: "Libre Franklin", "Helvetica Neue", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;">Just two days earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke up that he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of putting Western boots on the ground in Ukraine in order to prevent a Russian victory. Li Hui is expected to visit Russia, the EU headquarters in Brussels, Poland, Ukraine, Germany and France.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; font-family: "Libre Franklin", "Helvetica Neue", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;">The Chinese spokesperson Mao Ning kept the expectations low by<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </span>adding that “Behind this, there is only one goal that China hopes to achieve, that is, to build consensus for ending the conflict and pave the way for peace talks. China will continue to play its role, carry out shuttle diplomacy, pool consensus and contribute China’s wisdom for the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis.”<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; font-family: "Libre Franklin", "Helvetica Neue", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;">Macron spoke up after a summit of European leaders in Paris on Monday. But in diplomacy, there is always something more than what meets the eye. <a href="https://tass.com/world/1753891" style="background-color: transparent; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222222; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 0.13s ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 0.13s ease-in-out 0s;">Macron later insisted</a> that he had spoken quite deliberately: “These are rather serious topics. My every word on this issue is weighted, thought through and calculated.” Nonetheless, representatives of most of the 20 participating countries at the Paris conclave, <a href="https://tass.com/world/1754009" style="background-color: transparent; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222222; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 0.13s ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 0.13s ease-in-out 0s;">especially Germany</a>, later took a public position that they had no intention to send troops to Ukraine and were strongly opposed to participation in military operations against Russia.<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </span></p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; font-family: "Libre Franklin", "Helvetica Neue", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="box-sizing: inherit;"></span></p><p>To which I say that if that is the case, then Macron needs to be removed from power and confined for treatment in a mental institution. Even those idiots who yammer about international law and that Putin's invasion was "unprovoked" cannot deny that Ukraine was governed by a super-corrupt oligarchy who had destroyed an already moribund economy, that its security forces were dominated by bonafide NAZIS and that its claims to being a democracy were fraudulent.</p><p>For THIS we risk World War III? Israel can commit a genocide with our assistance but we must threaten nuclear war because Russia is winning the war we orchestrated against it?</p><p>This is what you have to understand. Our oligarchs are, for the most part at least, absolute idiots. As such, they will stumble us all into nuclear war the same way that the oligarchs of 1914 blundered into World War I. [Everytime I've encountered some claim that the cunning British orchestrated the whole thing to weaken Germany I see only an elaborate hypothesis with little in the way of evidence.]</p><p>There are no genius masterminds behind this. The moral frauds weeping crocodile tears for the Ukrainians while aiding and abetting the slaughter of Palestinians, all the while incapable of grasping the way the rest of the "international community" views their complete hypocrisy? The military-industrial complex pursuing short-term profit above all else, and giving us airplanes that fall from the sky and fighter-jets that simply don't work and tanks that get a half-mile to the gallon and require constant, expensive maintenance? The fat, stupid, slothful neo-con chickenhawks writing their imbecilic, masturbation fantasies? The retail-chain owners getting themselves blackmailed by Jeffrey Epstein for raping pubescent girls on his island?</p><p>They're just a bunch of racist, greedy psychopaths and sociopaths who have so much power because our culture has become so confused and addled (perhaps by over a century of propaganda and manipulation of an already gullible and stupid collective mindset) that it can't comprehend how to sweep them aside.</p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-52030446198410014942024-03-03T08:40:00.003-05:002024-03-03T08:42:33.431-05:00Joly Calls Gaza Massacre "A Nightmare"<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi23wpGg4Fd2bToIxiWMHT-UChDfQQhYt49Gf7ST-e1pgi8FK4XFXhVErvjMVt3RC8ZpCXhtyM4WeBumajYeymlCZQmR4QOQsPt3FUc-v4skqzK5Jev-xGjNJl4BFejB6AvNwiC6PjabFirpms3gI_bonOvnOF3JqS0MskXMw45sBJ7G7Y4xbF9TDjsaaBr/s913/zy2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="913" data-original-width="822" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi23wpGg4Fd2bToIxiWMHT-UChDfQQhYt49Gf7ST-e1pgi8FK4XFXhVErvjMVt3RC8ZpCXhtyM4WeBumajYeymlCZQmR4QOQsPt3FUc-v4skqzK5Jev-xGjNJl4BFejB6AvNwiC6PjabFirpms3gI_bonOvnOF3JqS0MskXMw45sBJ7G7Y4xbF9TDjsaaBr/s320/zy2.jpg" width="288" /></a></div><p>Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister and Deputy-Chief Bootlicker to J. R. Biden and B. Netanyahu and War Criminal, Melanie Joly, called the IDF's shooting of starving Palestinians assembling to get desperately needed food from trucks that entered North Gaza "<a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canada-says-what-happened-to-gaza-aid-convoy-is-a-nightmare-1.6789686" target="_blank">a nightmare</a>." </p><p><span class="placeline" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040; display: inline-block; font-size: 1.125rem; line-height: 1.75rem; text-transform: uppercase;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span class="placeline" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.75rem; text-transform: uppercase;">OTTAWA -</span><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> </span></p><p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040; display: inline; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.75rem; margin: 9pt 0px 0px; padding: 0px;">Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly said the deaths of dozens of people waiting for an aid convoy in Gaza was "a nightmare" and called for an end to fighting in the enclave on Thursday.</p><p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.75rem; margin: 9pt 0px 0px; padding: 0px;">Gaza health authorities said more than 100 Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli forces. Israel challenged the death toll and said many of the victims were run over by aid trucks.</p><p><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></span></p><p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.75rem; margin: 9pt 0px 0px; padding: 0px;">"When it comes to what happened in Gaza today ... I must say I think this is a nightmare," Joly told reporters in Ottawa. "We need to make sure that international aid is sent into Gaza and that people are protected when they go and get that aid."</p></blockquote><p style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.125rem; line-height: 1.75rem; margin: 9pt 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"></p><p>What a disgusting idiot she is.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>A "nightmare" is something that you get sometimes when you're asleep. I suppose I could look up some theories for how our brains form bad dreams that leave us frightened and distressed. But it's not really important. A nightmare is something that happens to you and there's nobody to blame, not even yourself, because they come from your subconscious. </p><p>On the other hand, perhaps you can blame a pattern of nightmares on some past trauma for which you can blame those who inflicted the trauma. But in that case, the nightmare is generally far less of an issue than the original trauma. If you want to obtain justice from an abuser, your PTSD nightmares aren't going to be the top of the list for what you go after them for in court.</p><p>A "nightmare" can also be used as a metaphor for a bad experience. Sometimes someone is to blame for the nightmare perhaps a serial killer is chasing you and your fellow teenagers around in a secluded campground in the forest, or a corrupt home renovations contractor has destroyed your property after having taken your money and then declared bankruptcy. Again though, in such instances, the real issue is the serial killer trying to murder you or the actual physical destruction to your home and the stolen money. Not the feeling of being trapped in a bad experience.</p><p>Because, often, a "nightmare" can also be caused by natural events and unfortunate circumstances. You get a flat tire on a lonely highway in the dead of night during a terrible rainstorm. You change the tire and not long after you get engine trouble. This happens. Sometimes it pours rain and sometimes cars break down. Nobody is really to blame for your predicament.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0PDzeL6HeSA2AOeELBSXsw4t69QFMcz5K-08WrkRCtMilHPCz4JcbmOSLy7aY7xzgriF-2vOhZegh2bvig-lPokPQjEei9ZDWFbeod9iZbArgvjAbxYy3MHrVl1J_j66ba1WeWao1mjwp-b1hksdmS7YJeq_CvwOsYzitx1HoDSyTBOu51PHLh9ds-OfB/s612/zy1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="612" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0PDzeL6HeSA2AOeELBSXsw4t69QFMcz5K-08WrkRCtMilHPCz4JcbmOSLy7aY7xzgriF-2vOhZegh2bvig-lPokPQjEei9ZDWFbeod9iZbArgvjAbxYy3MHrVl1J_j66ba1WeWao1mjwp-b1hksdmS7YJeq_CvwOsYzitx1HoDSyTBOu51PHLh9ds-OfB/s320/zy1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>And that's what Joly was trying to achieve with her choice of words here. She wanted to absolve Israel from its responsibility for this massacre. In the oligarch/imperialist press Palestinians "die" when bombs mysteriously fall on them from who knows where. Perhaps if a mainstream media hack journalist is being feisty they'll write that the Palestinians were actually "killed" by bombs or bullets. They're never "murdered" or "slaughtered" by the monstrous, racist IDF. In the CTV link it's "Gaza health authorities say" and their accusations are treated equally with the Israeli's contemptible, insulting, cynical response that "many of the victims were run over by aid trucks."</p><p>"Many of the victims"? So not all of them? What happened to the rest? And how does it happen that 100 people can be killed and 700 more injured by aid trucks? Did the drivers deliberately run them down? Did Palestinians rush to the trucks as they were backing up and ... It's obvious that Israel doesn't give a fuck that their excuses are obvious fabrications. This is what happens when you're a vicious, murderous racist who feels (justifiably) that you're never going to be held accountable. This is but one manifestation of the sadistic glee that Israel and its cowardly IDF has been indulging itself in and to which the Liberal government of Canada (and its Conservative opposition) have been enabling it in.</p><p>Joly babbles that she believes that "people [should be] protected when they go and get that aid." "Protected" from whom you asshole? What in the sweet name of fuck are you yammering about?!?<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtBKjqau8E2gDlLpVBxDV7e6TaKoNeHbzIeYqxDjOXdoXuz_QXx44YZgHUOuzXN0WvNEVBnJxUUCOpSZr3PGXj7gEvTTLfhqHxmT3VbvWmQ-g-8_Tax7ou_D8011a0v733iA9m37NzVtofSf7D_fAOHXRGrgAJt6-GdgrcBT64BHHW0PEiHp4N6miyDraW/s870/zy3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="489" data-original-width="870" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtBKjqau8E2gDlLpVBxDV7e6TaKoNeHbzIeYqxDjOXdoXuz_QXx44YZgHUOuzXN0WvNEVBnJxUUCOpSZr3PGXj7gEvTTLfhqHxmT3VbvWmQ-g-8_Tax7ou_D8011a0v733iA9m37NzVtofSf7D_fAOHXRGrgAJt6-GdgrcBT64BHHW0PEiHp4N6miyDraW/s320/zy3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/29/dozens-killed-injured-by-israeli-fire-in-gaza-while-collecting-food-aid" target="_blank">Here's another way of describing things</a>:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">More than 100 Palestinians have been killed and some 700 others wounded after Israeli troops opened fire on hundreds waiting for food aid southwest of Gaza City, health officials say, as the besieged enclave faces an unprecedented hunger crisis.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The Gaza Ministry of Health said on Thursday <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/2/29/israels-war-on-gaza-live-mass-killing-of-children-in-slow-motion-ngo" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">said at least 112 people</a> were killed and more than 750 wounded, with the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemning what it said was a cold-blooded “massacre”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">...</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">People <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/1/flour-massacre-how-gaza-food-killings-unfolded-and-israels-story-changed" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">had congregated</a> at al-Rashid Street, where aid trucks carrying flour were believed to be on the way. Al Jazeera verified footage showing the bodies of dozens of killed and wounded Palestinians being carried onto trucks as no ambulances could reach the area.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“We went to get flour. The Israeli army shot at us. There are many martyrs on the ground and until this moment we are withdrawing them. There is no first aid,” said one witness.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Reporting from the scene, Al Jazeera’s Ismail al-Ghoul said that after opening fire, Israeli tanks advanced and ran over many of the dead and injured bodies. “It is a massacre, on top of the starvation threatening citizens in Gaza,” he said.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The dead and wounded had been taken to four medical centres: al-Shifa, Kamal Adwan, Ahli and the Jordanian hospitals. Ambulances could not reach the area as the roads had been “totally destroyed”, said al-Ghoul.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">...</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith said the Israeli military “initially tried to pin the blame on the crowd” saying that dozens were hurt as a consequence of being crushed and trampled when aid trucks arrived.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“And then, after some pushing the Israelis went on to say that their troops felt threatened, that hundreds of troops approached their troops in a way they posed a threat to them so they responded by opening fire,” Smith added.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">...</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">One Palestinian man told Quds News Network the military attack was a “crime”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“I have been waiting since yesterday. At about 4:30 this morning, trucks started to come through. Once we approached the aid trucks, the Israeli tanks and warplanes started firing at us, as if it was a trap.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“To the Arab states I say, if you want to have us killed, why are you sending relief aid? If this continues, we do not want any aid delivered at all. Every convoy coming means another massacre.”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Jadallah al-Shafei, the head of the nurses’ department at al-Shifa Hospital, said that “the situation is beyond any words”, adding that “the hospital was flooded with dozens of dead bodies and hundreds of injured”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“The majority of the victims suffered gunshots and shrapnel in the head and upper parts of their bodies. They were hit by direct artillery shelling, drone missiles and gun firing,” he told Al Jazeera.</span></p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"></span></p><p>As usual, the inimitable Caitlin Johnstone provides an eloquent skewering of the imperialist/oligarch media's mentally deranged, cowardly depiction of events in <a href="https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/03/02/when-the-imperial-media-report-on-an-israeli-massacre/" target="_blank">"When The Imperial Media Reports On An Israeli Massacre"</a>:</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">As terrible as the Israeli spin machine has been on this atrocity, the western imperial media have been even worse. The verbal gymnastics they’ve been performing in their headlines to avoid saying Israel massacred starving people who were waiting for food would be genuinely impressive if it wasn’t so ghoulish.</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">“<a href="https://archive.is/9h1Co" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">As Hungry Gazans Crowd a Convoy, a Crush of Bodies, Israeli Gunshots and a Deadly Toll</a>” reads one New York Times header, like the summary of an episode of a Netflix murder mystery show.</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">“<a href="https://archive.is/2GppV" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Chaotic aid delivery turns deadly as Israeli, Gazan officials trade blame</a>,” says an indecipherably cryptic headline from The Washington Post.</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">“Biden says Gaza food aid-related deaths complicate ceasefire talks,” <a href="https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/1763250884954259639" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">says The Guardian</a>. “Food aid-related deaths”? Seriously?</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">“<a href="https://archive.is/NfqFC" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">More than 100 killed as crowd waits for aid, Hamas-run health ministry says</a>,” reads a BBC headline. The UK’s state broadcaster is here using a tried and true tactic for casting doubt on death counts by deliberately associating them with Hamas, despite the fact that the Gaza health ministry’s death counts are considered so reliable that <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3w4w7/israeli-intelligence-health-ministry-death-toll" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Israeli intelligence services use them</a> in their own internal records.</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">“At least 100 killed and 700 injured in chaotic incident” <a href="https://twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/1763187530474655880" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">says CNN</a>, like it’s describing a frat party that got out of control.</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">“<a href="https://archive.is/zqs7B" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Carnage at Gaza food aid site amid Israeli gunfire</a>” reads another CNN headline, as though the carnage and the Israeli gunfire are two unrelated phenomena which just unluckily occurred at around the same time.</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">CNN also repeatedly refers to the killings as “<a href="https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1763299164111486992" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">food aid deaths</a>”, as though it’s the food aid that killed them and not the military of a very specific and very nameable state power.</p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"></p><p>Let's be clear: Just like when stephen harper and his crew of drooling, imbecilic basket-cases (including lizard-faced Pierre Poillievre) covered-up torture in Afghanistan, it made them war criminals. And by doing its part to enable a deliberate genocide, Trudeau's government of hypocritical sociopathic mewling liberal fuck-faces are also war criminals. Sadly, given bloated, rancid, pants-pissing, closet-case stephen harper's continued ability to waddle about in freedom, Canadians are fine with tolerating war criminals in their midsts. Hell, we even give retired nazis standing ovations in our Parliament.</p><p><br /></p><p> </p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-20577031889698672722024-02-28T06:05:00.003-05:002024-02-28T06:05:21.891-05:00Caitlin Johnstone on Aaron Bushnell<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFerd6aas7KV78SvPeYoV9V6f3pYQdbHTithu5AcdO9biPrEFkNoygwZl3rLcRrL5xAnYEnFKMOazqOsDSE-y4nQSdP8H6-zAVGHT3XqJGRDg8cRo6UfylQhRrCtPFTB0t_Dswmfo-onH3yqqsAepg5VbPdvCqFgrCoSGWy7PR5aKiYUUU7w1W7ky5i57O/s824/medium-12.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="634" data-original-width="824" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFerd6aas7KV78SvPeYoV9V6f3pYQdbHTithu5AcdO9biPrEFkNoygwZl3rLcRrL5xAnYEnFKMOazqOsDSE-y4nQSdP8H6-zAVGHT3XqJGRDg8cRo6UfylQhRrCtPFTB0t_Dswmfo-onH3yqqsAepg5VbPdvCqFgrCoSGWy7PR5aKiYUUU7w1W7ky5i57O/s320/medium-12.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/02/28/a-profound-act-of-sincerity/" target="_blank">"A Profound Act Of Sincerity"</a></span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">One of the main reasons <a href="https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/aaron-bushnell-burned-himself-alive" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell</a> is having such an earthshaking impact on our society is because it’s the single most profound act of sincerity that any of us have ever witnessed.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">In this fraudulent civilization where everything is fake and stupid, we are not accustomed to such sincerity. We’re accustomed to vapid mainstream culture manufactured in New York and Los Angeles, airheaded celebrities who never talk about anything real, self-aggrandizing Instagram activism, synthetic political factions designed to herd populist discontent into support for status quo politics, phony shitlib “I hear you, I stand with you [but I won’t actually do anything]” posturing, endless propaganda and diversion from the mass media and its online equivalents which are algorithmically boosted by Silicon Valley tech plutocrats, and a mind-controlled dystopia where almost everyone is sleepwalking through life in a psyop-induced fog.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">That is the sort of experience we have been conditioned to expect here in the shadow of the western empire. And then, out of nowhere, some Air Force guy comes along and does something <strong><em>real</em></strong>. Something as authentic and sincere as anything could possibly be, with the very noblest of intentions.</p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"></p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-37092790549784490342024-02-27T14:08:00.002-05:002024-02-27T14:08:16.885-05:00The Courage of His Convictions: Aaron Bushnell<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; font-style: italic;">“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; font-style: italic;">“The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj07jrCkAxbhirZqVmIFUG7Lx1JZvD7rdixhg8CwjUP-4NyieleOUVcqA2N0jdWQxJiM0NnMWXuikT45MYtqi8C11qA81uAGYZlKDdrEp7JBjIW-I2KVM81Me-diyi-u8n8iMFLN-T_TvGDWrGBHWgv0BGz4uNGz-p7GoE__qgDy8ionF5c9aRJ8jzANkTB/s1200/r1.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1200" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj07jrCkAxbhirZqVmIFUG7Lx1JZvD7rdixhg8CwjUP-4NyieleOUVcqA2N0jdWQxJiM0NnMWXuikT45MYtqi8C11qA81uAGYZlKDdrEp7JBjIW-I2KVM81Me-diyi-u8n8iMFLN-T_TvGDWrGBHWgv0BGz4uNGz-p7GoE__qgDy8ionF5c9aRJ8jzANkTB/s320/r1.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Aaron Bushnell couldn't live in a society that actively supported a deliberate genocide. He no doubt could not satisfy his conscience by engaging in symbolic protests. It wasn't going to be enough for him to sign a petition or write a letter to those people who are probably [given the nature of the US political system] only pretending to represent his interests. I am going to speculate that he felt his entire culture, the values it espoused, the expressions of joy of its artists and entertainers, the longings of its musicians and poets, the everyday diversions of the individuals living within it, ... all were tainted by their passivity in the face of this cruel, racist, murderous, sadistic, evil genocide.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Genocide is as bad as it gets. Wiping out an entire people, men, women and children, as an act of deliberate policy, generally in order to steal what they possessed, or out of sheer racist hatred, is about the worst thing a culture can do. After that, who cares about who got what award for making a film? Who cares about your freedom to wear whatever clothes you want to? Who cares about which sports team wins a championship? Who cares about your promotion? Who cares about your current political leader expressing his support for some other people ostensibly fighting for freedom and democracy against some other alleged evil oppressor?</p><p>Aaron Bushnell recognized the enormity of the crime that his country was engaged in and, since he knew he was powerless to stop it through traditional protest, he decided that he could no longer live in it. </p><p>While reading about Bushnell's act I've occasionally come across idiotic comments from anonymous persons condemning him and deriding him as being mentally ill. As if a society engaged in genocide isn't hideously sick! At the start of this current round of Israeli barbarism I recall reading the comments of some comfortable North American "progressives," ... the sort who are still going to vote for "Genocide Joe Biden" because "Hitler-lite" is supposedly less evil than "Regular Hitler" ... who condemned Hamas and the Palestinians for resorting to violence. What shrivelled souls!</p><p>I disagree with genuine non-violent activists but I respect the courage of their convictions when they put their bodies on the line and endure the brutality of the front-line goons of the oligarchy without retaliating. But some person sitting at their computer lazily expressing their lazy opinion received from their unremarkable learning and their unoriginal thinking about how violence is "bad" and it makes one no better than the abuser, such a person fills me with contempt.</p><p>It's most likely they've had no experience dealing with what Palestinians in Gaza, or campesinos in El Salvador, or Tamils in Sri Lanka, had endured. It's also clear that they've probably never in the slightest grasped the enormity of the injustices and cruelties of what activists have decided to dedicate their lives to combat, and that is what makes them capable of their repulsive smugness and condescension.</p><p>Part of me is worried that I'm starting to make this about myself. But what I'm trying to accomplish here is that I think I understand very much where Aaron Bushnell was coming from. For the moment at least, I'm still alive, and I can communicate something of the feeling of overwhelming despair that Mr. Bushnell felt when he looked at his society in the weeks before he took his life.</p><p>For example: Jon Stewart recently returned to "The Daily Show." I didn't actually care. But then I read an article somewhere about how liberals were spitting mad that he was criticizing Joe Biden and the Democrats on the grounds of Biden's obvious mental incapacity. There was a link to the YouTube video of Stewart's monologue and so I decided to check it out, to see what the liberals were upset about. I watched it to the point where Stewart begins to deride Biden's description of Netanyahu's genocidal rampage as "over the top." Stewart joked that that was akin to his mother's complaints about the half-time show at the Super Bowl. The audience started laughing as Stewart continued with the clip but I was already moving to pause it and click away. Because I'm tired of people like us goddamned LAUGHING about stuff we should be enraged about. </p><p>I said (<a href="https://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.com/2008/04/iraq-war-isnt-funny-anymore.html" target="_blank">about fifteen years ago</a>) how unproductive I thought it was for "The Daily Show" to be continuing to make jokes about the Iraq War. At first, you know, I thought that Stewart and his team's skewering the bush II idiots with satire was subversive and worthwhile. But after five years and over a million deaths later, it just seemed that the audience was laughing at the Iraqis' expense. And now, in 2023, if you really consider the swath of destruction from Afghanistan, where unknown numbers are probably starving to death as Biden stole the country's money to punish the Taliban for defeating his puppet-government of rapists and druglords, before he made food prices shoot through the roof by fomenting a war between Russia and Ukraine, all the way across Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Gaza to Libya, where NATO overthrew Gaddafi and turned the most prosperous nation in North Africa to a failed-state presided over by racist jihadists, ... for those idiots are still be making jokes is obscene.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijNVC7e9zYzNcXexketAsVhz8jEa0rczOi_1yPM6-9n3ErjSTl4BkEZ4tvXB7CMOU0SrPbaOdKkV8ysKNg-KiMlahR97GZncVvL0Ie9YFzaMlZ2f2jmhV-r_6dUp7Tb4m_5eJOOtBZpbvJaU9v5lBr1gbxRRzyJBqvy41JEOc2oMh0DScErT6mAc_KGZnd/s791/r3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="791" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijNVC7e9zYzNcXexketAsVhz8jEa0rczOi_1yPM6-9n3ErjSTl4BkEZ4tvXB7CMOU0SrPbaOdKkV8ysKNg-KiMlahR97GZncVvL0Ie9YFzaMlZ2f2jmhV-r_6dUp7Tb4m_5eJOOtBZpbvJaU9v5lBr1gbxRRzyJBqvy41JEOc2oMh0DScErT6mAc_KGZnd/s320/r3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>I think I'll quote from <a href="https://jacobin.com/2024/02/aaron-bushnell-self-immolation-israel-embassy-gaza" target="_blank">Seraj Assi's article at </a><i><a href="https://jacobin.com/2024/02/aaron-bushnell-self-immolation-israel-embassy-gaza" target="_blank">Jacobin</a> </i>for a more eloquent expression of the significance of Aaron Bushnell's brave sacrifice:</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Lighting oneself on fire is not a tactic that anyone who is of sound frame of mind would choose to employ lightly. It is an action borne of desperation, of the feeling that no other tactics, from writing and calling elected officials to attending protests to engaging in civil disobedience, have any ability to hasten the end of the stream of horrors we have seen in Gaza since October. Bushnell’s action was extreme, but many among us can surely relate to his feelings of hopelessness, rage, and heartbreak engendered by watching ethnic cleansing live on our social media platforms, then witnessing precious few elected officials — including within the Democratic Party — summon the courage to demand an end to such gruesome violence.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Bushnell died so that Gaza may live. He died for a free Palestine, and to remind us that many Americans stand against Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and siege of Gaza, and its decades-long oppression of the Palestinian people. His death should serve as a call for action — an urgent plea to do everything we can to stop the unending atrocities in Gaza carried out with US public money and US public officials’ approval, to ensure that no one ever feels compelled to take their own life in such a grisly protest again.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Shortly before his death, Aaron posted the following message online: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”</span></p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><p>We often praise those who are willing to die for a noble cause or to defend the ones they love. Some of us find it easier to praise those who die fighting an enemy; for instance, a soldier fighting other soldiers, or a father saving his family from an attacker, or a bystander intervening when someone else's life is endangered by a maniac. But Aaron Bushnell was fighting apathy and callousness and selfishness. I can't find it in me to criticize his action. Instead, I condemn the culture, the society, the system, the rancid individuals who made him think he had no other choice.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCDJDl4a3mTa3b2syO1LhocMJpc5magh2QE4RGk1npa5ViTJgxpja2cDVaOq0AMcvazU8CwulitIwTXlG3YEVyWVU16rFGD-X-MVi-TPDtWfIeZd8npPqais4NmDbo9LJJZXEqYQNMJZVosmg8Rw2ldIGLDw4TXTvMmcjfJXV0n7tlzwwNe1dd7EddnGuF/s1280/r2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCDJDl4a3mTa3b2syO1LhocMJpc5magh2QE4RGk1npa5ViTJgxpja2cDVaOq0AMcvazU8CwulitIwTXlG3YEVyWVU16rFGD-X-MVi-TPDtWfIeZd8npPqais4NmDbo9LJJZXEqYQNMJZVosmg8Rw2ldIGLDw4TXTvMmcjfJXV0n7tlzwwNe1dd7EddnGuF/s320/r2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-74757237732534213572024-02-25T08:54:00.002-05:002024-02-25T11:32:53.144-05:00Trudeau be-shits himself in Ukraine<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyH5ghoh3RkC1stvOoGXnuyaEoVNoaNMvwdvXyzlOISkrj4fR-nCWigiGlHGB1p5O2vbYNDxFR1NQUwNIMuZ7h2fn7Xrp6TUVZC7VMY8h7lahep_0selzjvV37tIHO7Zd1XK7k8RBNxoQqOQmQHKhW9pFKxyz6GG5ta4AtnHAvkUCU2vWCB43Sn4ctL0KU/s2048/russofowbeeya.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1873" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyH5ghoh3RkC1stvOoGXnuyaEoVNoaNMvwdvXyzlOISkrj4fR-nCWigiGlHGB1p5O2vbYNDxFR1NQUwNIMuZ7h2fn7Xrp6TUVZC7VMY8h7lahep_0selzjvV37tIHO7Zd1XK7k8RBNxoQqOQmQHKhW9pFKxyz6GG5ta4AtnHAvkUCU2vWCB43Sn4ctL0KU/s320/russofowbeeya.JPG" width="293" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>So our airhead, pro-genocide, neoliberal dimbulb prime minister <a href="https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2024/02/24/prime-minister-visits-kyiv-and-announces-additional-support-ukraine" target="_blank">Justin Trudeau paid a "surprise" visit to Kiev yesterday</a>. Doing what he does, he made empty promises of eternal support and expressed other meaningless platitudes. Among Trudeau's promises was around $150 million in mostly non-military aid. What's Ukrainian for "How fucking pathetic!" ???<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;"></span></p><blockquote>This day serves as a reminder of what Ukraine is fighting for – the values of peace, justice, and democracy. To the civilians-turned-soldiers fighting to protect their homeland, the volunteers providing care to those injured, and all Ukrainians who remain defiant in the face of Russia’s attacks, know that Canada is with you. We will continue to work closely with our Allies and international partners to support Ukraine and Ukrainians as they continue to fight for their freedom, for their independence, and for democracy.</blockquote><p></p><p>Aside from the fact that Ukraine hadn't been much of a democracy since the Maidan Coup, and its government (mainly its war and spying sectors) were dominated by out-and-out nazis who were oppressing ethnic Russians, millions of Ukrainians chose to flee rather than defend their nazi-kleptocrat government, tens of thousands of those Ukrainians killed "defending their country" were forced conscripts who were sent in as untrained cannon-fodder, and that massive amounts of the money and weapons that got to Ukraine (and weren't blown up by the Russians) was lost to corruption and looting, Trudeau's words are inspiring.</p><p>This is sickening garbage. At least half-a-million Ukrainians have been killed because slimey neocons like Victoria Nuland, Hillary Clinton, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, John Bolton want a ghost of a chance of an orgasm at the thought of weakening Russia. And the perverted fantasies of these neocons is tolerated by the oligarchy because it means profits for weapons manufacturers and the criminals on Wall Street who have invested in them.</p><p>I used to ask my fellow progressive bloggers, who had swallowed the NATO propaganda about this war, just why it was that politicians who were fine with torturing Afghans, or with a million dead Iraqis, or the destruction of Libya, the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, literally millions of refugees from across all these countries, were genuinely upset about Russia invading Ukraine.</p><p>Was the difference in concern for mostly white-skinned Ukrainians over generally darker-skinned Asians rooted in racism?</p><p>Actually, it was a trick question. Our politicians don't give a shit about Ukrainian lives. That's why they've thrown hundreds of thousands of them away and wrecked their country in a shit-headed attempt to weaken Russia. </p><p>But I could ask my trick question again. And, you know what? I think that I will!</p><p>Why did <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2311721539792" target="_blank">Trudeau go to Kiev</a> and squeak about Ukrainian freedom and democracy while he remains (at best) silent about the deliberate genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza? Is he a hypocrite? Well, ... actually, yes. But also, he's a figurehead. An errand boy. Perhaps he's too stupid and deluded to actually know what he's doing. But, by that token, his professed support for Ukraine is also meaningless stupidity and delusion.</p><p>Why am I blogging again? Well, you see, there were a few years where I was trying out sharing my political outbursts under my own name on social media where friends and family (and their friends and families) could interact with my "radical" lefty views. And then, somehow, the algorhythims changed and I started to get way less responses to my political posts (but, strangely, my slices of everyday life posts still got the same amount of reactions) and then Mork Zookerberg got in his fight with the Canadian government and I couldn't even share my readings anymore.<br /><br />This is still pretty much a waste of time. But whatever.</p><p><a href="https://www.cjpme.org/stop_genocide_resign" target="_blank">Here's a link to a Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East to send emails to ministers Joly, Hussen and Miller to stop supporting genocide or, if they don't want to do that, to resign their posts since they're obviously scumbags</a>.</p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-750941387683776632024-02-24T19:15:00.003-05:002024-02-24T19:15:47.509-05:00Response to an "Off Guardian" Piece About the Global Oligarchy<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS8JPOlkbfYNFX8mkm9NSNkxgpBz6l_6H3Vc5Az6wiOAziK6PSxjjaeia0dpnxGGUqc3fSG0CTSo_o-HBmKbfqPDIJ0FGyjq1upwHddBS1_CMRh_toojt3OpC0eSHi4dq_qTTqNv0Jgit_pCw6zr_zJDAAc1rMGBXJDSYl_Y775ByU-J9SabBYpyyz32UX/s1024/sass1.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="668" data-original-width="1024" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS8JPOlkbfYNFX8mkm9NSNkxgpBz6l_6H3Vc5Az6wiOAziK6PSxjjaeia0dpnxGGUqc3fSG0CTSo_o-HBmKbfqPDIJ0FGyjq1upwHddBS1_CMRh_toojt3OpC0eSHi4dq_qTTqNv0Jgit_pCw6zr_zJDAAc1rMGBXJDSYl_Y775ByU-J9SabBYpyyz32UX/s320/sass1.webp" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>So here is my response to this <i>Off Guardian</i> piece: <a href="https://off-guardian.org/2024/02/15/the-theyre-all-in-it-together-rebuttal-canard/" target="_blank">"The 'they're all in it together' rebuttal canard (Multipolarity is a crock)"</a> by Iain David, offered by an anonymous commenter in the comments section at this post. (From time to time I might, for all I know, provide quotes from Purple library guy's response to the article that he left in that same comments section.)</p><p>I have bittersweet memories of <i>The Guardian</i>. I remember when they used to provide an excellent antitode to the bush II regime's garbage about Iraq WMD's and NATO "winning" in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, sadly, they continue to disgrace themselves with Ukraine, with Syria, with Assange, and I wasn't keen to read them anymore.</p><p>And then I developed my bittersweet memories of <i>Off Guardian</i>. At first they provided well-written pieces criticizing the propaganda system of the international political-economic order. Then, in 2020, they started writing pandemic denialism. I know from personal experience that pandemic denialism is garbage. And <i>Off Guardian</i>'s increasingly unhinged denial of reality caused me to unsubscribe from their newsfeed and I hardly read them now.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Anyhoooo ... on with the article:<p></p><p class="dropcap" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: Alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I am among a relatively small group of independent researchers and journalists who question the proposed multipolar world order.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: Alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">One of the objections often thrown my (and our) way—by those who presumably support a new world order led by the BRICS+ group of nations—is that we critics of multipolarity are claiming, with regard to national governments, that “they’re all in it together.”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: Alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Having never once made that argument, constantly refuting it is very annoying. So let me outline why the “they’re all in it together” rebuttal is a canard.</span></p><p>Hmmm. Personally I don't support a new world order led by BRICS+ , but some of his critics might. I see BRICS+ as an organization of increasingly powerful countries that had formerly been forced to accede to the dictates of a world order dominated by the USA, Western Europe, and Japan who are now economically important enough to insist on a level of equal treatment in the world capitalist order. The two countries that I think reflect this are Brazil and India. Two other members of BRICS+ are Russia and China. Russia was once a superpower which, post-USSR, tried to join the US-led family of capitalist nations, but which was then still treated as a dangerous rival needing further weakening and perhaps dissolution before it would be truly welcomed. (To which Russia said "Fuck that.") And China had exited the capitalist world in 1949 and developed (after a fashion) autonomously until the 1980's, when it began to integrate with the international capitalist economy, but on its own terms. It has done so, by most standards, with spectacular success, to the extent that the US leadership now sees it as their biggest threat.</p><p>This says something about the US leadership. For the most part, international capitalists voluntarily relocated their factories to China to take advantage of cheap labour and lax regulations (as well as cheap oil which made shipping everything across oceans from China feasible). It was no secret what would happen if you developed Chinese industry and granted Chinese firms access to your technology in return for exploiting their labour. Now they all act like this was some inscrutable Asian plot.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5uyoYtu_ZHyLvQFTNtpNBMmsfJipGMZGRUhq-c_x5SZ_6nWiQ1cRDlaJ-jRBb7_fdydT0G7GhktW8zetZEaFIpiZ1wYlU73Nr7UozPgw5COn-d_ZhKQVx4R6b2r0cN0mL1qnX-4Nodc7Pk7TGZvk8ftC5ttC-LqrzKAFM0owj4x_Qt8uJio6ATB6jGvtR/s300/sass2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="300" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5uyoYtu_ZHyLvQFTNtpNBMmsfJipGMZGRUhq-c_x5SZ_6nWiQ1cRDlaJ-jRBb7_fdydT0G7GhktW8zetZEaFIpiZ1wYlU73Nr7UozPgw5COn-d_ZhKQVx4R6b2r0cN0mL1qnX-4Nodc7Pk7TGZvk8ftC5ttC-LqrzKAFM0owj4x_Qt8uJio6ATB6jGvtR/s1600/sass2.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><p>I've already read Iain Davis's piece (a few days ago) but I don't quite recall what comes next. </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: Alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Essentially the “all in it together” response runs something like this:</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: Alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">By only highlighting all the areas of agreement between East and West you are overlooking the very real geopolitical differences and conflicts between the two. You are claiming Putin is a WEF stooge and that Xi is a puppet of the White House. We only need to look at their statements and foreign policy commitments to know this isn’t true. Yours is a ridiculous argument, you stupid “they’re all in it together” proponent. Obviously you couldn’t be more wrong. </span></em></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: Alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">While making this riposte suggests the defenders of multipolarity haven’t read anything we’ve written—or have deliberately misinterpreted it—it is a not a cogent argument in any event. It needs to be exposed</span><span style="font-size: 1.4rem;">.</span></p><p>So Davis and his likeminded writers do NOT believe that Putin and Xi are Western puppets. But his critics aren't making a cogent argument when they say that there are real geopolitical differences and conflicts and antagonistic foreign policy commitments that identify a genuine rivalry between the US-led order and the Russia/China-involved BRICS+.</p><p>At this point I have no idea what's going on.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: Alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The multipolar world order (MWO) is touted as a potential antidote to the current, claimed, international rules based order or system (IRBO). The IRBO emerged as the Western-led consensus on international relations under the “unipolar world order,” headed by the US / NATO alliance of nations states. The IRBO and unipolarity dominated geopolitics following the collapse of the Soviet Union.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: Alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The IRBO—and the unipolar world order—is predatory and serves the economic and geopolitical interests of Western developed nations, at the cost of everyone else. It has allowed the West to instigate, sponsor and engage in conflicts all over the world. The IRBO aligned nation states pillaged resources, installed puppet governments and exploited weaker nations as they liked. The IRBO is little more than a neocolonialist project of a public-private empire. There are no actual rules beyond “might is right.”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: Alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On this we can all agree. There’s nothing worth defending with regard to the IRBO.</span></p><p>Agreed.</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262b2f; font-family: Alegreya, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;">The problems begin when you start pointing out that the MWO is not, in fact, an antidote to the IRBO. It is the evolution of the IRBO. Multipolarity is virtually an enabling act for a new system of global oppression and the transition to a new global economic model.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Yeah. It is intended to be a capitalist world order based on the equality of member states as exists in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) where the vote of Malta or the Marshall Islands counts as much as the vote of the USA or China. A world where international law is applied on the basis of equality under said law, instead of power. In short, a realization of the sovereignty of all states idealized in the <a href="https://opil.ouplaw.com/display/10.1093/law:epil/9780199231690/law-9780199231690-e1500" target="_blank">Westphalian System</a>.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: Alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The is flatly denied by MWO advocates. The argument between MWO backers and opponents appears to be rooted in a dispute over the nature of oligarchy.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: Alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Hitherto, the numerous attempts by a global oligarchy to construct a “new world order” (NWO) were fiercely criticised by almost the entire Western “independent media.” The “global” reach of oligarchs—who care little for nation states—was consistently exposed and reported. Thoroughly researched historical evidence was published, and frequently cited, demonstrating that global power networks, combining both public and private institutions, existed above and beyond national government control.</span></p><p>To effectively evaluate this would require that I go and read more <i>Off Guardian</i> articles about the international oligarchy as well as those of their unnamed critics. But I'm not going to do that. If Davis is claiming that US-American oligarchs, or Japanese oligarchs have absolutely no nationalistic tendencies, or that Chinese, Indian or Argentinian or Nigerian or Indonesian (or whatever) oligarchs have no concerns specific to their countries of origin, and that it all "comes out in the wash" (perhaps from the way that global kleptocrats keep their money in New York or London and speculate against their own countries, requiring their populations to bail them out through the IMF when necessary) then I'd have to say he's exaggerating.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9MXWI4w_M_f214dwdUtpNU80hyh9lSzLMtbEsoynEbKPwKEN_uUzByCSbMkxnXYxKiy5nkcdwGYYEqCWWe7aK-YcaS4d6JWChetL1TzeGab9L0v7AZbTMHgs_iwMFdAQ9pNy3FagWmS93n3HtjJPU0tSz6zv1yH09nyTjU4RyDq2Nf83D3SVWvY1sQgqL/s240/sass3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="211" data-original-width="240" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9MXWI4w_M_f214dwdUtpNU80hyh9lSzLMtbEsoynEbKPwKEN_uUzByCSbMkxnXYxKiy5nkcdwGYYEqCWWe7aK-YcaS4d6JWChetL1TzeGab9L0v7AZbTMHgs_iwMFdAQ9pNy3FagWmS93n3HtjJPU0tSz6zv1yH09nyTjU4RyDq2Nf83D3SVWvY1sQgqL/s1600/sass3.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p>I believe Purple library guy had some comments:</p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">So. The impetus towards a "multipolar" world order comes from various motivations that differ among the different countries, and some of them involve internationalist oligarchs while others do not and may even actively cut against the interests of international finance capital.</span><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">Meanwhile, I read tons of leftist and anti-US stuff, and I don't ever remember anyone saying the "multipolar" world order being pushed for by the BRICS would be fundamentally different in its orientation towards international capitalism. About the only thing anyone ever says would be good about it is, the basic idea of not having a single boss enforcing particular kinds of stuff would leave more wiggle room for everyone else, since the multi poles would all have to agree before they could make anything too terrible for a country doing its own thing. So the article presenting this supposed, and indeed supposedly dominant, camp claiming China et al's multipolar world would be this wonderful paradigm shift . . . far as I know, this camp they're reacting against, um, doesn't exist. Not on the left, anyway--maybe some of the pro-Russia alt-right are into that idea, but come on, you can't expect right wingers to have an analysis of capitalism.</span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">...</span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">Finally, the article seems to be claiming that while the unipolar approach was good enough before, now the international elites need a multipolar one to properly do all these supposed "pillar policies" . . . but since it is also saying that those policies are backed by ALL countries, including the backers of unipolarity, I don't see where this makes any sense, or why international oligarchs should have any reason to care whether the world order is a unipolar one (that does what they want) or a multipolar one (that does what they want).</span></p><p>Hopefully Davis can clear up some of my confusion:</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Now, in the West, some segments of the so-called “independent media” are claiming that oligarchs do not manipulate “all” nation states. Certain countries, such as China, India, Iran and Russia, have allegedly brought their oligarchs to book to reestablish politician-led governmental authority over their respective polities.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Instead, the MWO pushers claim, we are witnessing the “return” of political realism. Apparently, that realism no longer includes analysis of oligarch influence.</span></p><p>I gotta say, I always find gratituitous attacks on the integrity of people who disagree with you (ie., "so-called 'independent media'") to be annoying. Is Davis stating that the people who believe in national oligarchies, or that BRICS+ is a different entity from the Washington-dominated "rules-based international order" are actually paid shills of the oligarchy?</p><p>Anyhow, Davis says that his critics claim that the governments of China, India, Iran and Russia have more control of their oligarchs than is supposedly the case in other countries like the USA, UK, France, Germany and Japan. At the same time he states that these Multipolar World Order pushers do not have an analysis of oligarch influence. Except for the fact that they argue that capitalist oligarchs are subservient to the political class in these countries, which IS an analysis. Whether it's correct or not is another matter, but it IS an analysis.</p><p>Does (for instance) Vladimir Putin dominate the Russian business class? Or is he their humble servant? Or is it something between those two poles? And whatever the case, is Putin's relationship with Russia's business class exactly the same as (say) Biden's with the US business class? And, within (say) the Russian business class, are their gradations of power and influence and wealth? If so, why? And we can ask the same question all down the line.</p><p>I'll quote Purple library guy again:</p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">So, to start off with, BRICs is not a monolith; the countries in it are very different in both their politics and in their relationships with oligarchs.</span><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">India has no real power centre other than private sector oligarchs--even the whole Hindutva deal is basically their baby. They are fairly internationally oriented and are classic neoliberals, happy to cannibalize their country for more personal wealth. They're just in BRICs so they can be at the big kids table.</span><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">Russia does have a separate state power centre, and Putin has demonstrated its teeth. Russia's capitalist oligarchy has been globalist in its orientation from the start, and indeed many of them seem to be only loosely attached to Russia itself. Putin made a deal with them which was basically, quit the most egregious fouling of your own nests and I won't put you in jail. They remained powerful, internationalist, and fairly parasitic. But because of all the sanctions, the war economy, and the war patriotism, Russia may currently be having a shift from transnationally-oriented oligarchs to national bourgeoisie, with the oligarchs increasingly pushed into a choice between their national and international holdings--either they just leave Russia entirely and become international rich people, or they stay in Russia, lose access to a lot of their international holdings and markets, and orient inwards or towards trade with their allies who ignore the sanctions.</span><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">China obviously has a strong state sector. And, it also has a lot of really rich people, some of whom seem to have quite a bit of power. But it's really hard to figure out just how penetrated the state is by the hyperwealthy in China. Obviously somewhat, because how would it not be? Clearly not as completely as in the United States, because they regularly cut individual oligarchs down to size or in the case of serious crimes even execute them. If the Sacklers had lived in China, they would be dead right now. And when, I think it was the Ten-Cent guy, started talking neoliberal and criticizing the Chinese government's non-neoliberal ways, something happened and suddenly he apologized and then shut the hell up from there on, and his social network platform got hit with tough regulations. The Communist Party seems to have its own ideology which is not neoliberal and may not even be entirely capitalist, and it does not primarily draw the new talent from the corporate sector. Meanwhile, the hyperwealthy in China are not nearly as internationalist as the Russian or even the Indian ones. Maybe it has to do with China's rules against foreign ownership, maybe it has to do with the Chinese government controlling a lot of the finance, maybe it's about China's sheer size, but China seems to be the centre of their world.</span><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">South Africa is a pure corporate kleptocracy, its kleptocrats only restrained from being completely internationalist by their orientation towards gulping down goodies corruptly shoveled to them by the South African government, which they own. I cheer for their quite socialist trade union movement. Their version of "multipolar world order" would certainly be one dominated by international oligarchs.</span><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">Brazil is very complicated. It has class struggle, it has different factions of the bourgeoisie, it has fascist fundamentalist churches funded by the US, it has race issues, all kinds of stuff. Its international policies can swing wildly depending on which political side is currently in charge. I wish the Movimiento Sin Tierra could somehow take over.</span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">Iran, who are in the BRICS club now, want a multipolar world order because they think it would get them out from under sanctions and because they don't much like the boss of the unipolar world order. Their oligarchs would probably be happy to be internationalist--they don't seem to have put a lot of effort into import substitution--and don't see much chance of that unless the world government isn't out to get their country.</span></p><p>PLG goes into more detail in his comment at the "Scumbags" link, but I think the point has been made.</p><p>Continuing with Davis:</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The BRICS+ led nation states are opposing the rules of Western oligarchs. This supposedly explains why they want a MWO founded upon adherence to an allegedly real system of international law and multilateral decision making. The governments of these countries are no longer willing to suffer the tyranny of the Western oligarch-led IRBO.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Or so we are told.</span></p><p>Here, Davis appears to be saying that there is no such thing as international law at all. He appears to be imagining some bizarre world where nation-states are entirely fictional entities that an international oligarchy have created out of whole cloth. I suppose that there is no such thing as Africans who want to export their own brand of coffee to the wealthy countries but are blocked by tariffs. There is no effort to prevent Chinese entities from having access to the latest in microchip technology. European countries don't block North American food conglomerates products with GMO's. All of those things I just mentioned are some quaint pantomime designed to confuse us and make us think that international oligarchs are all united in being rich people fucking over poor people and being rewarded in proportion to their investment of US-dollars. Apparently there are no capitalists in Latin America or Africa or South Asia who want to develop their industries or to get the same access to world markets or to be able to protect sectors of their economies <br /><br />Oh yes! And the recent use of sanctions and the seizure of foreign assets (Russian or Venezuelan for example) by US and UK banks and the switch by BRICs+ to trading increasingly in their own currencies, and Saudi Arabia's concommitant acceptance of other currencies (especially the Chinese <i>yuan</i>) for its oil, ... all of this is inconsequential. Meaningless fluff. Some sort of spectacle to fool the rubes into thinking that there is anything other than a monolithic international oligarchic order that persists eternally behind its veil of illusions.</p><p>Or that's just what this so-called independent analyst Iain Davis seems to be saying. If that is NOT what he means to be thought as saying, he should learn how to write so as to not create such an effect in his readers.</p><p>If Davis genuinely thinks that a global capitalist system in which all countries are bound by the same trade rules as every other country, ... a world in which the power of the G-7 is mitigated by Russia, China, India, Brazil, OPEC, ... would not be different in any important respects from the world as it existed in 2008, he is greatly mistaken.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It seems like a dwindling number of us in the “independent media” maintain that a “global public-private partnership” (G3P), controlled by a global network of oligarchs, still exists and is still intent upon establishing its NWO. We are Luddites because we keep banging on about the “fact” that certain policy commitments are common to all countries. No matter which side of the IRBO/MWO fence they sit.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: alegreya, serif; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;">All governments, in all major economies, are avid enthusiasts of SDGs, biosecurity, digitalisation, tokenisation, the censorship of “disinformation,” CBDC (digital money), population surveillance and, most crucially, global governance under the auspices of the United Nations (UN). We who criticise multipolarity, suggest these policy commitments can be viewed as the pillars of the modern NWO.</span></p><p>Yes. Well, capitalists are capitalists after all. And, as well, there ARE people on the Left who put more faith in the inherent virtues of Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping (or whoever) and see them as genuine anti-imperialists. But Davis is talking about people who think multipolarity is important. And, to his argument, I wouldn't say that people like me who think multipolarity is important are saying that national capitalisms are the End of History. Here's what I said in my original "Scumbags" post:</p><p style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em;"></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em;">When we see the USA's hegemony unravelling in the Middle East, with China brokering a truce between Saudi Arabia and Iran we should celebrate it. Because the Sunni-Shia rivalry has been ruinous for ordinary Muslims (and ordinary non-Muslims) in that part of the world. Because the USA is exploiting this rivalry to punish Iran for its revolution in 1979 which expelled US influence from the country and humiliated the USA with the hostage crisis (the US leadership is inordinately thin-skinned and holds grudges seemingly forever).</p><p style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em;">The weaker the international hegemony of the USA, the more possible it is for there to be openings for ordinary people. Look at what the USA's ruling class does to its own people! Look at their incarceration rate! Look at their healthcare bankruptcies! Look at their infant mortality figures!</p><p style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em;">Through the orchestrated creation of a global oligarchic order (the seemingly as natural as the ocean currents process of "globalization") the USA has constructed an international order bent on exporting this rancid system to every corner of the globe. I submit that NATIONAL economies, controlled by NATIONAL capitalists, served by politicians beholden to those domestic capitalists, will be easier to confront and challenge than politicians and capitalists with the whole weight of the world behind them. </p></blockquote><p style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em;"></p><p>I also made reference to the greater hopes for world peace:</p><p><span style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"></span></p><blockquote>Furthermore, the weakening of the USA's global hegemony would make the world more peaceful. The USA couldn't have done something like the invasion of Iraq during the Cold War. Look at what a charnel house it has made of the Middle East since the 1990's.</blockquote><p></p><p>[NOTE: I have no idea how I just made that ugly grey background disappear in that last quote.] I believe Purple library guy had some thoughts to add:</p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">As to all these "pillar policies", being internationally co-ordinated . . . there are none. Governments like information about their people; the more authoritarian, the more they like it. Corporations like information about their customers and anyone they think might plausibly become a customer and anyone who might get in the way of people becoming customers . . . so, pretty much everyone. Given technological tools to get it, both will employ those tools and try to make them legal. And they all try to keep up with the Joneses--they see someone else using an effective surveillance tool, they'll want it too . . . and Palantir or whoever will be happy to sell it to them. Just because they're all nefarious doesn't mean they're all co-ordinated.</span><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">Finally, the article seems to be claiming that while the unipolar approach was good enough before, now the international elites need a multipolar one to properly do all these supposed "pillar policies" . . . but since it is also saying that those policies are backed by ALL countries, including the backers of unipolarity, I don't see where this makes any sense, or why international oligarchs should have any reason to care whether the world order is a unipolar one (that does what they want) or a multipolar one (that does what they want).</span></p><p>Exactly. There are some important differences between a unipolar world and a multipolar world. Multipolarity will not bring heaven on earth, but it might provide for a more equitable distribution of the world's wealth. It might produce a more peaceful world. It might make for a less arrogant and violent USA. And Davis's contention that THE international oligarchy is served just as well by either unipolarity or multipolarity begs the question as to who is behind any actual shift from one to the other.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIMWHmoBZDifxhSh8VYXDM40K08PAOp905YYizgIjvsGerT8XaNo-cc0eDQ5Wcp3FPz3MqROBj8Xc35TF_Bj2UEH0FH6kBzBin-w5iKi6Ppu0qAVEBWdWLW8rU91vO8m8YQGiaLlvxPR0NACvQjHCLackuDfxTMvNPJt4SdSaKtV3jpefJKaQJ3eyA2cfB/s1000/sass5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="739" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIMWHmoBZDifxhSh8VYXDM40K08PAOp905YYizgIjvsGerT8XaNo-cc0eDQ5Wcp3FPz3MqROBj8Xc35TF_Bj2UEH0FH6kBzBin-w5iKi6Ppu0qAVEBWdWLW8rU91vO8m8YQGiaLlvxPR0NACvQjHCLackuDfxTMvNPJt4SdSaKtV3jpefJKaQJ3eyA2cfB/s320/sass5.jpg" width="236" /></a></div><br /><p>I guess I can't think of much else to say in response to this essay. There was a bit in it about the United Nations, but, I'm old and I tire more easily with each passing year. I'll just copy n' paste what PLG typed:</p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">Thinking of alt-right, there's one odd little detail that makes me wonder about this article: The insistence on the importance of the United Nations as some kind of marker of oppression. Really, what? That sounds like right wing conspiracy theory to me. The United Nations has a small budget which it does not control. It has very little power for the most part. The Security Council is deeply undemocratic, but to the extent it does anything it mostly acts as a brake on unilateral power exercises by any one major power. As for the rest of the UN apparatus, as far as I can tell it does more good than harm--not a lot of good, but not all that much harm either. Sometimes an agency will be used, usually by the US, to do some dirty, but a lot of the time they're just sort of plugging away with well meaning staff deploying their limited budgets and influence as best they can, and co-ordinating some stuff that needs to be co-ordinated. And I've never seen any, and I mean any, actual evidence that the UN is anything other than that. By and large, I think nearly all the countries of the world support the UN based on that understanding. China and Russia support it as a claim to legitimacy--they contrast the vague "rules-based" international order of NATO with their professed dedication to the actually written-down rules of international law and the United Nations. It gives them a ready-made thing to reach for that already has broad respect, where if they tried to invent their own thing it would inevitably seem self-serving.</span><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">So when I see someone talking about the UN like it's some kind of boogey man and as if China's reason for talking about the UN would be . . . being prompted by international think tanks?! I get leery. China is fairly capitalist, but it cares very little about the interests of international capital or international capitalist oligarchs, and the UN is . . . less swayed or controlled by international capital than one would expect given how much control international capital has in general. Still substantially, but the UN is not the WTO, say, much less the WEF. It is NOT the entity international oligarchs would choose for a stalking horse. People who spin conspiracy theories about the UN do so for two reasons: 1. Other people are already spinning such theories and they have been influenced by this, and 2. It sounds like some kind of world government, and that must be bad, right? It's stupid.</span><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><br style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.6188px;" /><br /></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">So yeah, I think that Off-Guardian article is bullshit. Sure, there are international oligarchs and yes, they control many things and have think tanks and so on. And, they may not lose much if a “multipolar” world order replaces the “unipolar ‘rules-based’” one; that’s not the point, was never the point, and hardly anyone ever claimed it was the point. But they will probably lose something, if only because China’s capitalism is quite nationalist and China’s finances are largely nationally controlled. It is certainly amazingly unlikely that a cabal of internationalist oligarchs have been scheming to replace the US-led world order, which has been amazingly good to them.</span></p><p>This is Thwap sayin' "May the good Lord take a like'n to ya, and blow you up REAL SOON!"</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI2YWW43_nHDa0tczhc3HnaGOvb4dvHlNI4AnN40x2q33AUeISOpiYMxgAmp5QNQ_P5HMVXzeirA4qV6yKiJIaPihu1-RfihFenz0Jp_jvvgmr6Gz46aiQwfJAw7wngifDUSiZ0oJBnUtSUFBhyZoBM6vND0g87WCzck9NZL_wiotP6U6bJU0Cv8WqmIN4/s1164/sass4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="776" data-original-width="1164" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI2YWW43_nHDa0tczhc3HnaGOvb4dvHlNI4AnN40x2q33AUeISOpiYMxgAmp5QNQ_P5HMVXzeirA4qV6yKiJIaPihu1-RfihFenz0Jp_jvvgmr6Gz46aiQwfJAw7wngifDUSiZ0oJBnUtSUFBhyZoBM6vND0g87WCzck9NZL_wiotP6U6bJU0Cv8WqmIN4/s320/sass4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262b2f; font-family: alegreya, serif; font-size: 1.4rem; line-height: 33.6px; margin: 1.4rem auto; max-width: 42rem; padding: 0px 1rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-10378379667535247292024-02-22T05:59:00.000-05:002024-02-22T05:59:09.045-05:00Trump, Biden, and Clinton (Hillary) - a brief note<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR4mBx9AElzWel_mh6ILF5mn97gnbGan8bA9tWPJzcWMoCH63WzYce5QIZhbxuNNzaYFZsfgGGjnjRKeZUMyWlisV5jhyphenhyphenZMPl1uH-1vL_2XmFJQjBLJL3e-2h3atja-pX1BLFr3yi0QIh4NT083uZVo51_apyXnckxiet289PeV2sFdvqQGKEIHVgtxaON/s1960/TrumBideClint2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1226" data-original-width="1960" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR4mBx9AElzWel_mh6ILF5mn97gnbGan8bA9tWPJzcWMoCH63WzYce5QIZhbxuNNzaYFZsfgGGjnjRKeZUMyWlisV5jhyphenhyphenZMPl1uH-1vL_2XmFJQjBLJL3e-2h3atja-pX1BLFr3yi0QIh4NT083uZVo51_apyXnckxiet289PeV2sFdvqQGKEIHVgtxaON/s320/TrumBideClint2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Even though <a href="https://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.com/2024/02/scumbags.html" target="_blank">Purple library guy already wrote an excellent critique of the <i>Off Guardian</i> article that had been offered by another [anonymous] commenter, about the global hegemonic oligarchic order</a>, there are still some things I'd like to say about it and I will probably at least begin working on that tomorrow.</p><p>In the meantime, I'd just like to post a brief bit of observation and speculation.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Donald Trump IS dangerous. His misogyny and racism are a YUGE part of who he is. And by that I mean that he's much more racist than your run-of-the-mill Washington DC politician (who are, generally, pretty fucking racist). As such, he attracts confirmed, hardcore racists and misogynists. I wouldn't say that he's more authoritarian than other figures in the Republican or Democratic parties' leaderships, but if your preference is for a more refined, bureaucratic torture state than for one that celebrates its brutality for the sheer joy of exercising it, then you'll want to choose someone else other than Trump.</p><p>Plus, there's no doubt that while some of his fans are just confused, frightened people who need a Big Daddy figure to comfort them and indulge them in their paranoid fantasies, some of his followers are indeed Dangerous. (Note the capital "D" folks.) </p><p>Exhibit A: This piece of shit ...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2anhU-0TMM_43m580ttVEA8flEFpvlbGzHJPU3xy19iDmuWmP7o6bSRH1bGtKODnbgOyuk3W14Uk-oG0iYW2vq20BKHGP4CyTG841mbsuqrs_8p_zfiy5_D__FVjJvNCjdtdPfYpWZD_ca6btGh3edVQqknKPcHu1nQ-BGp_9ESoas3CPtefzpKI3wNRU/s320/urmp3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="152" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2anhU-0TMM_43m580ttVEA8flEFpvlbGzHJPU3xy19iDmuWmP7o6bSRH1bGtKODnbgOyuk3W14Uk-oG0iYW2vq20BKHGP4CyTG841mbsuqrs_8p_zfiy5_D__FVjJvNCjdtdPfYpWZD_ca6btGh3edVQqknKPcHu1nQ-BGp_9ESoas3CPtefzpKI3wNRU/s1600/urmp3.jpg" width="152" /></a></div><br /><p>This guy is a loud and proud murderous nazi. End of story.</p><p>Exhibit B: These pieces of shit ...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWpQ8QgbXTjw8NGEwWCbAo0wBlQmmxF0VcCNv0C09xjeoEmllnjWRJQhd4_V4FZez7bxWwWnkyS3_f89CQ_KqDFZdKkxzbc1rWB7b5c9-OZDT59sLCYP4z53wFr210czFfJeSg3KsyU1Z9Cm4p3tlTGK_OR-OsF2EM5rnlRRNfpgihpBjB5bMW6dXrSbK3/s480/t1.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="308" data-original-width="480" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWpQ8QgbXTjw8NGEwWCbAo0wBlQmmxF0VcCNv0C09xjeoEmllnjWRJQhd4_V4FZez7bxWwWnkyS3_f89CQ_KqDFZdKkxzbc1rWB7b5c9-OZDT59sLCYP4z53wFr210czFfJeSg3KsyU1Z9Cm4p3tlTGK_OR-OsF2EM5rnlRRNfpgihpBjB5bMW6dXrSbK3/s320/t1.webp" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>These are two, white, rich assholes who live in a gated community <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53891184" target="_blank">that was on the way to the home of the Mayor of St Louis where a Black Lives Matter protest was going. They were protesting the Mayor's dangerous, shit-head move of providing the names and addresses of people who wrote letters calling for her to defund the police</a>. </p><p>This couple saw a parade of protesters marching past their mansion and decided that the best thing to do was to run outside and point guns at them. Dozens of Black people being murdered by the police every year in the USA and the brutally racist nature of the USA's criminal justice system is of no consequence to this couple.</p><p>This demographic, older, wealthy, white, is Trump's main source of support. Many of them partake of the same sorts of paranoid conspiracy theories that their less fortunate political brethren and sistren feast off of. But in their case there's no need for them to feel frightened by the world. It's only their extreme selfishness that causes them to be so upset all the time. Which makes them dangerous.</p><p>Make no mistake about it: Trump and his fan-base ARE dangerous. Which is why it was so fucking stupid to empower him with the imbecilic "Russiagate" conspiracy theory. The FBI abusing its power to illegally target the Trump campaign based on the bullshit Steele Dossier, and the "respectable" mainstream media putting all their credibility into pumping-up that witchhunt for three fucking horrible years, only to have it all end with a pathetic fart from Robert Mueller strengthened Trump. It gave his paranoid, conspiracy-minded fans a reason to be paranoid and conspiracy-minded.</p><p>Furthermore, if Trump is so fucking dangerous, why are the Democrats risking the fate of their country by running the doddering, mentally crumbling, unpopular Joe Biden against him? Biden was a weak candidate in 2020. He's clearly tired and confused. He is being hidden from the public and the press by people who have had <a href="https://jacobin.com/2024/02/democrats-joe-biden-age-trump" target="_blank">FOUR FUCKING YEARS</a> to acknowledge this and prepare the way for a successor!</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;">But Biden’s team decidedly does not <em style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box;">want</em> people to watch him.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;">The president is still continuing with his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/21/us/politics/biden-public-appearances-media.html" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 3px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">unprecedented</a> refusal to sit down for an interview with a major paper. He has still done by far the fewest press conferences and interviews out of almost any modern president, beating only Ronald Reagan in the first category. He just declined for the second year in a row to sit down for a Super Bowl interview and at precisely the time he is lagging in the polls, prompting head scratching from political operatives, who <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/biden-skipping-super-bowl-interview-advisors-say-part-plan-rcna137358" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 3px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">call it</a> a “problem.”</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;">“It’s the biggest television audience, not even close, and you get a chance to do a twenty, twenty-five-minute interview on that day, and you don’t do it, that’s a kind of sign that the staff or yourself doesn’t have much confidence in you. There’s no other way to read this,” <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4460817-carville-biden-not-accepting-super-bowl-interview-is-a-sign/" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 3px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">commented</a> James Carville, about as militant a Democratic loyalist as you’re likely to find.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;">Biden’s defenders, meanwhile, have scrambled to launch a string of unconvincing pushbacks that all undercut one another. The immediate response was to <a href="https://www.messageboxnews.com/p/thoughts-on-the-partisan-attack-on" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 3px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">paint</a> Hur as a partisan attack dog and his description of Biden’s troubles as brazen lies, before liberal commentators started <a href="https://twitter.com/jonathanchait/status/1755967199938757072" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 3px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">pointing</a> to Trump’s own, identical missteps — unhelpful, given they’ve spent the past seven years professing they think <a href="https://crooked.com/articles/sickness-isnt-donald-trumps-mind/" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 3px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">Trump has dementia</a>.</p><aside class="sr-at__slot sr-at__slot--left prt-x" style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; clear: left; color: #191919; float: left; font-family: Rosart, serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px 2em 2em -23vw; max-width: 300px;"></aside><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;">Jonathan Chait <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/how-bad-is-special-counsels-report-on-biden-age-perception.html" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 3px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">argued</a> that even if Hur’s allegations are true, it doesn’t matter, since “Reagan was pretty senile and controlled by advisers,” and “nobody cared because the results were fine.” NBC News then interviewed neurologists who <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/bidens-memory-issues-draw-attention-neurologists-weigh-rcna138135" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 3px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">told us</a> it’s no big deal for someone of Biden’s age to forget what year his son died.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;">This haphazard, throw-everything-at-the-wall approach isn’t likely to be persuasive. In fact, it will probably be the opposite, smacking of quiet panic and fueling a perception that those fending off charges about Biden’s acuity don’t really believe what they’re saying.</p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"></p><p>Are we honestly to believe that either the Democratic Party USA, with four years to search their ranks, find nobody better to lead the country than Joe Biden? Or that the leadership of the Democratic Party USA lacked the ability to stand up to the awesome vindictive power of Joe Biden?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUG20WKDcxS0xnRnvqituV9tVLFBpEuJO_j9N1lJdSJX4vYpoPXGY9KahrF5HsLChboQdpWAuakMX87sw5stT31HRsWILQgpEInl6Uf6K6IycupQ9a5f9_HdhAKJ6mOJf9kmwquYPec3Nwb663tOd7ShYZt5znBH5BwYlqA_yyGZDrhfB7pseehnduahxp/s1280/TrumBideClint3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUG20WKDcxS0xnRnvqituV9tVLFBpEuJO_j9N1lJdSJX4vYpoPXGY9KahrF5HsLChboQdpWAuakMX87sw5stT31HRsWILQgpEInl6Uf6K6IycupQ9a5f9_HdhAKJ6mOJf9kmwquYPec3Nwb663tOd7ShYZt5znBH5BwYlqA_yyGZDrhfB7pseehnduahxp/s320/TrumBideClint3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Unless they DO have a plan! A GENIUS plan! An AWESOME plan! A plan to restore justice to the universe!</p><p>They wait until it's too late to do anything else and they absolutely humiliate Joe Biden (whose arrogant sense of entitlement has remained intact regardless of the deterioration of his higher cognitive functions) and then, no fucking way do they elevate the even less popular Kamala Harris (a babbling, neoliberal authoritarian moron). No.</p><p>After it's too late to do anything else, HILLARY CLINTON rises to occasion and saves her country from the threat of Trump!!! Certain now that the clear and present danger of a second Trump presidency has cured vast swathes of the electorate of the stupid misogyny that was the ONLY reason they rejected her in sufficient numbers to give Trump his 2016 Electoral College victory, HILLARY CLINTON ("The Most Qualified Candidate EVAHHHHH!!!!!!") will take to the stage to the fanfare of heavenly trumpets from God's own orchestra pit and graciously concede to save a country that doesn't deserve HER.</p><p>And then let the chips fall where they may and Gawd help us all.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmZ1ucUYF3peSbHPlmeRi7y6u0tQrylRVUlMPymShbsnw12ZEQdbOVPjNl-qd2EyuJDolg9Eikl0KoV7kjI3JA6uHfy-HYheuMN7dnHirky_Nl45Kf9X_pFVNhpA34WeJQMpQpm2KMGfJYaTDzDVp0cVRg3-lfHUlK-Q4AiooAisxJsnDDrd15DoioY1KC/s1160/TrumBideClint4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="629" data-original-width="1160" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmZ1ucUYF3peSbHPlmeRi7y6u0tQrylRVUlMPymShbsnw12ZEQdbOVPjNl-qd2EyuJDolg9Eikl0KoV7kjI3JA6uHfy-HYheuMN7dnHirky_Nl45Kf9X_pFVNhpA34WeJQMpQpm2KMGfJYaTDzDVp0cVRg3-lfHUlK-Q4AiooAisxJsnDDrd15DoioY1KC/s320/TrumBideClint4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p><br /></p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-11221185331601470462024-02-18T07:01:00.006-05:002024-02-18T11:10:39.221-05:00Scumbags<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Kr9tV1etygtGLhO8fmLnIUaRnAvTwOrFgysni6VmcTL52oXv6jmHT0iSN2VbaGBOur7FfwuxAWOAl7f3Kzo5p1wgi6dLbxkoEHe1PnPAt2fEU49P5UqhyYAnTEYfh9bKou0v4VHIVEyUS_kAnfdQ53kQOAmtexvq9XKuUDylx0Y63b9L_qE9dIYlf_ez/s480/vito1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Kr9tV1etygtGLhO8fmLnIUaRnAvTwOrFgysni6VmcTL52oXv6jmHT0iSN2VbaGBOur7FfwuxAWOAl7f3Kzo5p1wgi6dLbxkoEHe1PnPAt2fEU49P5UqhyYAnTEYfh9bKou0v4VHIVEyUS_kAnfdQ53kQOAmtexvq9XKuUDylx0Y63b9L_qE9dIYlf_ez/s320/vito1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>I started this post in late-January. Then stuff happened. I'm posting it now because the overall observation remains valid. The thesis is this: The various geo-political struggles going on today are often just conflicts between different sets of scumbags. It is up to ordinary folks to do their best to objectively look at each conflict and decide what the facts are and how the victory of one side or the other will best weaken the more dangerous party. Generally speaking, NONE of these actors are on our side and therefore we should NOT see ourselves as being part of any team.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Now, I'm not saying that I genuinely believed the Biden administration when anyone within it claimed they were deeply troubled by the slaughter of the Palestinians as they continued to send weapons to the Israelis who are doing the slaughtering. I don't believe that for a second. But I was of the opinion that this slaughter is Netanyahu's doing. That Netanyahu orchestrated this crisis and that the USA is going along with it because Israel is a strategically important ally and <strike>people</strike> scumbags like Biden go along with stuff like this from time-to-time for the sake of convenience. Like, it's not really all that important to Biden one way or another if 500,000 Palestinians die, or 500,000 Ukrainians, <a href="https://gppreview.com/2023/07/03/us-sanctions-are-robbing-venezuelans-of-basic-human-rights/" target="_blank">40,000 Venezuelans</a>, or <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/" target="_blank">45,000 US-Americans per year</a> for over a decade, or <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL30488579/" target="_blank">1,000,000 Iraqis</a>, or <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/" target="_blank">4.5 million (mostly Arabs)</a> in the USA's <a href="https://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.com/2015/04/gbwt-great-bullshit-war-on-terror.html" target="_blank">GBWT</a>. [There is no link for the 500,000 Palestinians because at present the actual death-toll is estimated at 30,000, with the rest of that number being potential deaths from disease and starvation under present conditions. There is no link for the 500,000 Ukrainians because our corporate-imperialist mainstream media (including Google) are absolutely terrible. They post garbage like 30,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed to 500,000 Russian soldiers killed. Absolute propaganda garbage.]</p><p>But anyway, my point was that Biden didn't instigate this but he doesn't really care. His administration's empty words about "urging restraint" or whatever are just for public consumption. Of course Biden could cut-off the weapons, but there would be at least a domestic political price to pay for that. The Republicans once invited Netanyahu to Washington to speak to Congress and condemn Obama's proposed treaty with Iran. I am not one of those people who believes that Israel (by which those sorts of people mean "The Jews") owns and runs the USA. But I am someone who disputes the notion that all a US president has to do is pick up the phone and an Israeli PM will instantly follow orders which is how Noam Chomsky (for instance) occasionally describes the relationship.</p><p>I believe this nightmare is Netanyahu's and, going against my usual thinking, I believe he conspired with others to bring it about. My thinking follows the line of argument from this comment from this <a href="https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/01/palestine-open-thread-2024-026.html#comments" target="_blank">Open Thread</a> from <i>Moon of Alabama</i>:</p><p style="background-color: #dee3e9; font-family: georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;"></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: #dee3e9; font-family: georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">After Izzzy intelligence obtained Hamas' detailed plan for Oct 7th they analyzed it.</p><p style="background-color: #dee3e9; font-family: georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">Important for analysis would be continuous monitoring of whether the reality on the ground - Hamas' current activities - matched the detailed plans.</p><p style="background-color: #dee3e9; font-family: georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">So that is what they did. Unit 8200 "the Central Collection Unit of the Intelligence Corps" made the decision to stand-down and cease the real-time monitoring of the tactical communication of Hamas operatives on their radios.</p><p style="background-color: #dee3e9; font-family: georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">Wait! Did I really mean "stand-down and cease monitoring"? They instead increased their diligence in monitoring. Right?</p><p style="background-color: #dee3e9; font-family: georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">Nope. Unit 8200 claims that everyone up and down the military/intelligence chain of command approved the ceasing of monitoring.</p><p style="background-color: #dee3e9; font-family: georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">So what is going on here?</p><p style="background-color: #dee3e9; font-family: georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">It couldn't be a false-flag in progress as there are thousands of IDF troops surrounding the Gaza border, a false-flag could never work. Oh, there **were** thousands of troops until just before Oct 7th when they withdrew for temporary duty in the West Bank.</p><p style="background-color: #dee3e9; font-family: georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">But a false-flag still wouldn't work. Hamas could be dispelled by the quick arrival of support troops.</p><p style="background-color: #dee3e9; font-family: georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">Oh no, the troops didn't arrive in force for hours. What gives?</p><p style="background-color: #dee3e9; font-family: georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">Still, a false-flag doesn't make sense unless there is a purpose. What good would the death of Izzzy civlians do? Oh, but it created blood lust which was then harnessed to "justify" the cleansing of Gaza and subsequently, the West Bank.</p><p style="background-color: #dee3e9; font-family: georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">But, there would be no blood lust if the casualties were light. The Hannibal Directive wasn't implemented for that purpose was it? They didn't implement the Hannibal Directive for ulterior motives?</p><p style="background-color: #dee3e9; font-family: georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">Or did they?</p></blockquote><p style="background-color: #dee3e9; font-family: georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;"></p><p>I mean, occasionally someone will say something about what FDR knew about the Japanese armada heading towards Pearl Harbour. But at the end of the day, would Roosevelt really allow the US Pacific fleet to be crippled like that? Personally, I doubt it. Same with 9-11. In that case, I personally believe that bush II and Cheney intentionally slowed all the institutional efforts to monitor things, but that the "inside job" theory is nonsensical due to the hundreds of actors required to keep silent and who would supposedly have stayed silent for 23 years. Sometimes it's just like it was with Stalin being warned about Hitler attacking the USSR: Stalin received numerous warnings of an impending attack that turned out to have been false. He believed that Churchill's warnings in particular were false and were intended to provoke a Soviet-German war to take the pressure off of Britain. All of those false alarms reinforced his belief that Hitler would never invade the USSR until he had his western flank secured. In this case, nobody accuses Stalin of having allowed Hitler's invasion. Instead they accuse Stalin of gross incompetence. The reality is that while Stalin might have been too personally invested in his own theory, which turned out wrong, he wasn't completely irrational.</p><p>But in the case of the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023, we have Israeli intelligence, Egyptian intelligence, even (according to Biden) US intelligence, warning the Israelis and <i>speaking out about it</i> and it just seems to me that the racist psychopath Netanyahu wanted this to happen this way. Just as him and his propagandists are unashamed to concoct lies about forty beheaded Israeli babies, or Hamas fighters gang-raping an Israeli woman and then playing an impromptu game of soccer with one of her severed breasts <i>during a military raid</i>, ... stupid claims that have since been debunked, Netanyahu was willing and able to murder hundreds of Israelis to create a measure of bloodlust in Israeli society that would allow him to pursue this genocide for his own narcissistic purposes.</p><p>But <a href="https://michael-hudson.com/2024/01/credit-the-economic-planner/" target="_blank">this interview between Danny Haiphong and Michael Hudson</a> has Hudson asserting that this is very much Biden's war and it is part of his adminstration's insane desire to start a war with Iran and thereby re-establish US dominance over the Middle East. (Hudson argues, as many others have, that this purely military solution is a symptom of the declining power of the USA diplomatically, economically and culturally.):</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #525252; font-family: "Source Sans Pro"; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; color: #525252; font-family: "Source Sans Pro"; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">The fact is that the rest of the world not only finds America unnecessary, but America and its NATO allies to be the major threat to their own prosperity. So they’re essentially splitting into their own world. And the BRICS group is expanding its trade relations, its investment relations, and especially its financial clearing and monetary operations to be independent of the dollar, de-dollarizing, and certainly independent of the euro, which seems to have no visible means of support right now, and going their own way. </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #525252; font-family: "Source Sans Pro"; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Now, that is exactly what has led the United States to push Israel [essentially] to follow Netanyahu’s belligerence, because the United States says, We realize we’re losing power. </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #525252; font-family: "Source Sans Pro"; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">We know that it’s really not a stalemate. We know that we’ve lost the chance for world dominance. We may be re-elected by telling people, you know, it doesn’t really matter. </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #525252; font-family: "Source Sans Pro"; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">But we know that it does matter. The last chance we have to assert American power is military. And the main military prize is the Near East now, just as it was after 9-11, when Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld pressed for an invasion of Iraq to begin grabbing its soil and to essentially create America’s foreign legion in the form of ISIS and al-Qaeda Iraq. So now America has two armies that it’s using to fight in the Near East, the ISIS/al-Qaeda foreign legion (Arabic-speaking foreign legion) and the Israelis. The plan is—and America is willing to fight to the last Israeli, just as it’s willing—it’s trying to fight to the last Ukrainian in order to make this final grab of the Near East in fighting Iran. </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #525252; font-family: "Source Sans Pro"; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">This is a crazy idea, but it seems that that’s exactly what is being planned. </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #525252; font-family: "Source Sans Pro"; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">General Petraeus, who lost the war in Afghanistan, has said, we’ve got to conquer Iran. That’s going to be—we can regain all the power that we’ve lost by attacking Iran. And so now it looks like President Biden is hoping to make a political comeback by saying, Well, we may not have blocked Russia and Ukraine, but at least we’ve conquered the Near East. </p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; color: #525252; font-family: "Source Sans Pro"; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"></p><p><br /></p><p>Notice that in neither of these scenarios do Biden or Netanyahu come off as innocent. No. Whatever the truth is, they're both scumbags. And what we have to understand is that we're living in a world dominated by scumbags. Since Biden, the Deep State, and the US imperialist oligarchy are scumbags, it is somewhat gratifying to see their efforts to maintain animosity between Saudi Arabia and Iran begin to fail as (with the mediation of China) both countries come to some sort of diplomatic understanding.</p><p>But Saudi Arabia is run by a horrible, HORRIBLE ruling class, and Mohammed bin Salman (its <i>de facto</i> ruler) is a horrible person in particular. And the government of Iran is horrible. And, I'd probably have to say the same about the government of China, although I don't pay attention to the news much because they're full of ridiculous propaganda. I'm not sure what the truth is about China's treatment of the Uyghurs, or human rights in general, but I'll go out on a limb and say that the Communist Party of China, while less bellicose and more meritocratic than the corrupt, decayed US oligarchy, are probably cold-blooded, amoral psychopaths.</p><p>We have to understand that we are observing contests between psychopathic scumbags. When Iranian women protest against their oppression by their misogynist government we should wish them well. But we should also realize that any assistance/publicity given to them by the US government/media system is calculated. We should also acknowledge that the USA might have some involvement in at least some of these protests. We should acknowledge that any US-backed alternative to the current Iranian ruling class will be scumbags serving US scumbag monstrous agendas. Given these facts, we should only hope that the Iranian people whose values we share, fight against their own government, whose values we oppose, in their own way without the interference of the cynical, hypocritical, duplicitous, USA ruling elite.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiom5SaVW2SMSBILJKCXIivn0DOiNnRZEn5DxgKyal7pb2dn8naRfrriVfP5GsQgwM4jLuK3MSdC806IEE7g35O4ElQy9dyAwLIEm8yO7zozu8CRA1hbqmlO4gB3JuMU-IxnRE2cWKEbp6DBtTEm2gjkuL5__Rk0OjBMoHwku9nIk_BaskvK7qzKqvPN3Uo/s1920/vito2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1462" data-original-width="1920" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiom5SaVW2SMSBILJKCXIivn0DOiNnRZEn5DxgKyal7pb2dn8naRfrriVfP5GsQgwM4jLuK3MSdC806IEE7g35O4ElQy9dyAwLIEm8yO7zozu8CRA1hbqmlO4gB3JuMU-IxnRE2cWKEbp6DBtTEm2gjkuL5__Rk0OjBMoHwku9nIk_BaskvK7qzKqvPN3Uo/s320/vito2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>When we see the USA's hegemony unravelling in the Middle East, with China brokering a truce between Saudi Arabia and Iran we should celebrate it. Because the Sunni-Shia rivalry has been ruinous for ordinary Muslims (and ordinary non-Muslims) in that part of the world. Because the USA is exploiting this rivalry to punish Iran for its revolution in 1979 which expelled US influence from the country and humiliated the USA with the hostage crisis (the US leadership is inordinately thin-skinned and holds grudges seemingly forever).</p><p>The weaker the international hegemony of the USA, the more possible it is for there to be openings for ordinary people. Look at what the USA's ruling class does to its own people! Look at their incarceration rate! Look at their healthcare bankruptcies! Look at their infant mortality figures!</p><p>Through the orchestrated creation of a global oligarchic order (the seemingly as natural as the ocean currents process of "globalization") the USA has constructed an international order bent on exporting this rancid system to every corner of the globe. I submit that NATIONAL economies, controlled by NATIONAL capitalists, served by politicians beholden to those domestic capitalists, will be easier to confront and challenge than politicians and capitalists with the whole weight of the world behind them. </p><p>Think about it! THEY can relocate anywhere they want to if a government tries to regulate them against their will. They have constructed international restrictions on the powers of national governments that have eliminated the abilities of those governments to limit corporations' freedom to pollute the environment or to allow those governments to protect vital industries.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8zZh_ZimYdfH56qmK-ESLV-ZS-oLc6_DQE6EobZRH3ew_fKbViQjlkA0RXgObxkQvawR-Oxk7SAr1Ovq66wbY84ip_9VONHDLxcWxh9u06kk9OooTs19qTSL4SZweNCvq6pPPRy7pGdQNe_tVKURvyJQiBwHhec2Dl9Sl5emEI3SYFDbtqNEQbuI_sx0Y/s220/vito3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="220" data-original-width="220" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8zZh_ZimYdfH56qmK-ESLV-ZS-oLc6_DQE6EobZRH3ew_fKbViQjlkA0RXgObxkQvawR-Oxk7SAr1Ovq66wbY84ip_9VONHDLxcWxh9u06kk9OooTs19qTSL4SZweNCvq6pPPRy7pGdQNe_tVKURvyJQiBwHhec2Dl9Sl5emEI3SYFDbtqNEQbuI_sx0Y/s1600/vito3.jpg" width="220" /></a></div><br /><p>Furthermore, the weakening of the USA's global hegemony would make the world more peaceful. The USA couldn't have done something like the invasion of Iraq during the Cold War. Look at what a charnel house it has made of the Middle East since the 1990's.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNAAkbhPVWai06GUpl6nPqBu1RpF7mCKHvS46X8MvqkMWeqREAf7-nOR-ID1aXRI90YXefkuXPeTuVwU5u7Fr2dZrPvOD7s5qOsUBuj3ETmie9HQyVzdB7ZVIzp6RUt8DYn1JVftbnJ3IIuvOwLrPaCSmFE6CDZTl34dWB64UuQsPAxVmbYNC_HI8j5icg/s1200/vito4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1200" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNAAkbhPVWai06GUpl6nPqBu1RpF7mCKHvS46X8MvqkMWeqREAf7-nOR-ID1aXRI90YXefkuXPeTuVwU5u7Fr2dZrPvOD7s5qOsUBuj3ETmie9HQyVzdB7ZVIzp6RUt8DYn1JVftbnJ3IIuvOwLrPaCSmFE6CDZTl34dWB64UuQsPAxVmbYNC_HI8j5icg/s320/vito4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>I could start typing about NATO vs. Russia. But I've written enough posts on this blog that if you read it you already know what I think. If you're new here, just browse around on the topic and you'll find out. But with regards to this post, ... yeah, I think Putin is a scumbag. But he was provoked into this war. The USA's ruling elite wants either a Russia so weak as to be docile, and perhaps even weak enough to be raped with impunity, or it wants to break Russia up into weaker states that can definitely be raped with impunity. The Biden administration continued the Obama-Clinton policy of working with shit-head nazis to attack Russia until Putin said enough's enough. In this particular contest of scumbags, NATO is the more dangerous party and it is the aggressor.</p><p>Oh yeah. I just remembered that last night I dreamed that Donald Rumsfeld was working in a college cafeteria. I think he was volunteering. In the dream it didn't surprise me that he was still alive because I forgot that he died a few years ago.</p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-28494668469136718902024-02-17T10:23:00.002-05:002024-02-26T07:25:30.316-05:00The Trials & Tribulations of Rob Oliphant<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjno8O015L25QpghLNxS2ZsnCbcfPpuxDl0YiLtRaJUbya_D3tj4cq1rsJhVf9opBWOUImP_5JrJs_amnL9BOAiqA57XGhvI1mBtJcR0OnNAftVScyQ9jUb31JIJyCCMUbGYGcvwBn08vacfL0h4NLDDmnbKM9WLYXz3SILrwg67saP-eIeRhEWWvedOLO4/s730/Hind%20Rajab.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="730" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjno8O015L25QpghLNxS2ZsnCbcfPpuxDl0YiLtRaJUbya_D3tj4cq1rsJhVf9opBWOUImP_5JrJs_amnL9BOAiqA57XGhvI1mBtJcR0OnNAftVScyQ9jUb31JIJyCCMUbGYGcvwBn08vacfL0h4NLDDmnbKM9WLYXz3SILrwg67saP-eIeRhEWWvedOLO4/s320/Hind%20Rajab.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hind Rajab, <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/16/313485/" target="_blank">murdered by the IDF</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p>Even though he belongs to the imperialst/oligarch Liberal Party of Canada, such is our confused, debased political culture that even a 100% - Grade-A Certified, genuine, radical human rights activist has told me that my Member of Parliament, <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/robert-oliphant(58858)" target="_blank">Rob Oliphant</a>, is one of the good guys. That he is sincere about human rights and that he has provided crucial assistance for many worthy causes on many occasions, both in government and in opposition.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Ah! Before I continue, I think it appropriate that I share the thoughts of the wonderfully centered Caitlin Johnstone on the correct moral position to take on Israel's current attempt to commit a genocide, a holocaust if you will, upon the people of Gaza.</p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/02/14/continuing-to-support-israel-at-this-point-just-means-youre-a-garbage-human-being/" target="_blank">"Continuing To Support Israel At This Point Just Means You're A Garbage Human Being"</a></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px;">If you can even excuse </span><strong style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px;"><em>genocide</em></strong><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px;"> to justify your continuing support for a nation or political party, then you can excuse literally anything. There is absolutely nothing the leaders of your political faction could possibly do that would cause you to stop supporting them. If this isn’t your red line, then you don’t have any red lines.</span></blockquote><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px;"></span><p></p><p>Right. So where were we? Ah yes! Recently the CBC found some extra time from reporting on Vladmir Putin's "unprovoked" "imperialist" attack on our nazi-oligarch-stooge allies in Ukraine to cover at least something related to the genocide in Gaza. Apparently, in a phone call with an unnamed constituent, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rob-oliphant-gaza-israel-joly-hamas-unrwa-1.7115468" target="_blank">Oliphant expressed opposition to his government's policy towards Israel</a> during this crisis:</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;"></p><blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">A leaked recording of a phone call between a Liberal MP and a constituent suggests the depth of the divisions in the government caucus over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's handling of the war in Gaza, the genocide case against Israel and the decision to defund a UN relief agency in the middle of a famine.</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">As parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, Rob Oliphant has the job of explaining and defending Canada's foreign policy in Parliament.</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">But in his conversation with the constituent, recorded on Feb. 1 without the MP's knowledge, Oliphant was clearly less than keen to defend the government.</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">Instead, he opened up about his reaction to the genocide allegation brought against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague and Canada's decision to defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the main UN agency providing aid to Palestinian refugees.</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;"></p><p>You know, I personally don't think this was strategic on Oliphant's part. Speaking to someone he knew would "leak" his words thereby signalling publicly to Trudeau how much he disagrees with him. Obviously I'm not certain one way or the other. It's a possibility, but I don't think that's why it happened. I think Oliphant is genuinely torn and was confessing this to his constituent.</p><p>But what on earth could he be "torn" about? Supporting a genocide versus not supporting a genocide? Here's how he described his dilemma:</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;"></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">The Liberal MP said on the call that his role as parliamentary secretary means he is "not able to be as public as some of my colleagues are.</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"I've come many times thinking, 'Do I quit that job? Do I just go back to being an MP?'"</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">He said a staffer persuaded him to stay on "because there needs to be a voice on the inside, not just on the outside."</p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;"></p><p>Also, there was this:</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;"></p><blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">Oliphant also spoke on the call of the need to be sensitive to the feelings of Canada's Jewish population and the "intergenerational trauma" caused by the Holocaust.</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">Ninety to 95 per cent of Canada's Jews are behind Israel right now, Oliphant said, adding, "I understand it."</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"But I also understand that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is hurting Israel. Not only killing Gazans, but hurting Israel. So for the love of Israel, tell him to stop."</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;"></p><p>First of all: If all of your supposed work "on the inside" only has you defending policies you see as fundamentally flawed and that will have long-term negative consequences, perhaps it isn't worth it to continue to morally compromise yourself.</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;"></p><blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">On February 8, Oliphant was challenged in the House of Commons on his government's UNRWA suspension by NDP foreign affairs critic Heather MacPherson.</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"Liberals made the decision to suspend life-saving funding to UNRWA without having seen any evidence of allegations or having waited for the results of the independent investigation," she said in question period. "UNRWA is the only organization that can reach Palestinians in Gaza who are starving and who are being killed in the tens of thousands, and the government cut life-saving support.</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"The decision needs to be reversed, and somebody needs to be held accountable. Was it the minister or was it the PMO that decided Canada should turn its back on starving Palestinians?"</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">With the foreign affairs minister in Eastern Europe, it fell to Oliphant to respond:</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"Mr. Speaker, let me be very clear. The funding that Canada is giving to civilians in Gaza has increased — just last week, $40 million more on top of the $60 million that was already there," he said. "This makes Canada a top donor for aid, helping with the crisis in Gaza. We are proud, and Canadians want us to help. Every time there is a time of emergency, we stand up and we are clear. We will always be there."</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">But the pride Oliphant expressed in that answer was not evident in his conversation with the constituent. This is how he described his reaction to the UNRWA decision in that call:</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"My heart falls down in my body," he said. "My heart hurts, because the only way to get that aid there is UNRWA.</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"We can't have 200 trucks a day. We need 800 trucks a day. We need more entry points. We need water access from the Mediterranean. And we need to push on those points. But we also need UNRWA, which is the only body that has the infrastructure to deliver the aid."</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">Oliphant said that any decision to divert UNRWA aid to other channels likely would be symbolic, because "the reality is that UNICEF or World Food Program or other agencies are going to have to use the same people that work for UNRWA. It's political and it's driving me crazy."</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">...</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">But Oliphant also warned on the call that the government's approach to the conflict, and that of its western allies, will have dangerous consequences.</p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"My fear is that the Global South will absolutely rebel and raise arms, maybe literally, because we have not listened," he said.</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;"></p><p>Secondly, even if 100% of Jewish Canadians support Israel's genocide of the Palestinians and are shrieking hypoocritically and insanely about how criticism of Israel's nazi-level behaviour is antisemitism, it's irrelevant. Genocide is wrong and it should be opposed and people who support it should be condemned for their complete moral failure instead of coddled and comforted.</p><p>I mean, for what it's worth, when this all started, even despite all the bullshit about the world beginning on October 7th, 2023 CE and Evil Hamas attacked Israel for no reason, ... that eventually the abominable, obvious cruelty and the expressed genocidal intent of the Israeli government, would cause people everywhere to open their eyes.</p><p>I really thought that all the Western, Anglo-American self-congratulatory drivel about saving the world in World War II against the evil, genocidal nazis, would have had some sort of impact on people today witnessing a genocide going on before their eyes and they would have all been out in the streets demanding our governments pull their heads out of their asses and condemn it.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNLteavgASpkSF4aR9hBJlYZYwEkS6Lx-qtMID4eIIDho_aae-uNHieEr2-7mh8BfsUPZaFVVUPL3iJ3nGkOTwjDHxoy4sdCCxvVlwRngVG0FsGeaYSy4c9xFmn34elDNi1GngjXDlKvC0oO1jS1Uf_eMcB4PjrdeJ6g-V-Cv6A2TL6zFNwNrHr4pOYGxz/s996/wubyawubya2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="996" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNLteavgASpkSF4aR9hBJlYZYwEkS6Lx-qtMID4eIIDho_aae-uNHieEr2-7mh8BfsUPZaFVVUPL3iJ3nGkOTwjDHxoy4sdCCxvVlwRngVG0FsGeaYSy4c9xFmn34elDNi1GngjXDlKvC0oO1jS1Uf_eMcB4PjrdeJ6g-V-Cv6A2TL6zFNwNrHr4pOYGxz/s320/wubyawubya2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Instead, life has gone on as usual. Our governments are actively colluding with Israel in its genocide. Some Jewish people continue to wallow in self-righteous, genocidal paranoid hypocrisy. (Whereas many of the Jewish people I've met are vocal in their opposition to Israel's violence.) Our news media, for the most part, commits the sin of ommission, dutifully informing us of Putin's sickening cruelty in Ukraine, ... all sarcasm aside: Putin's invasion of Ukraine was to preempt NATO's long-term goal of doing to him and Russia what it did to Gaddafi and Libya. The war is Biden's fault. In 21 months of war in Ukraine, 521 children have been killed. In 3 months of bombing in Gaza, over 13,000 children have been killed. To publish at least twice as many stories about the war in Ukraine as they do about the slaughter in Gaza being committed by our ally Israel just makes them rotten propagandists.</p><p>With such a species, in such a culture, perhaps Rob Oliphant actually believes (against all the evidence) that he can achieve something good working inside the imperialist-oligarch Trudeau government. As a prominent Liberal MP he no doubt risks his entire political career should he openly defy his government's evil support for genocide. But, to close, I'd like to quote <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/kjv-idx?type=citation&book=Mark&chapno=8&startverse=34&endverse=38#:~:text=Mark.,8%20Verses%2034%20to%2038&text=%5B36%5D%20For%20what%20shall%20it,in%20exchange%20for%20his%20soul%3Fhttps://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/kjv-idx?type=citation&book=Mark&chapno=8&startverse=34&endverse=38#:~:text=Mark.,8%20Verses%2034%20to%2038&text=%5B36%5D%20For%20what%20shall%20it,in%20exchange%20for%20his%20soul%3F" target="_blank">the following line from the Bible</a> as we consider the moral turmoil of Rob Oliphant who is also a United Church minister:</p><ol><span style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: medium;">For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?</span></ol><p>I'll leave it at that.</p><p><br /></p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-2361950065898538452024-02-13T10:43:00.002-05:002024-02-13T10:43:49.418-05:00The "2+2=4 Controversy"<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNJrACvsbBf2srWlvY7-GQ1wlXGNivVg1mlJDk-_SjMcGrHBwyPTA7DjPI8EjrTvih_0dz3oJSHOMyIRq4xWsXLsgG183mtO3Wq9yqtFHJ0jtNaJSAYDv2LqcfUE5BZLbpY4aU_pprgG6xV8zNm7FaI0pwvmhR0ZCdKSoavX8a0IWDXtmb0ArCbi3ae-D8/s420/wath1.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="420" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNJrACvsbBf2srWlvY7-GQ1wlXGNivVg1mlJDk-_SjMcGrHBwyPTA7DjPI8EjrTvih_0dz3oJSHOMyIRq4xWsXLsgG183mtO3Wq9yqtFHJ0jtNaJSAYDv2LqcfUE5BZLbpY4aU_pprgG6xV8zNm7FaI0pwvmhR0ZCdKSoavX8a0IWDXtmb0ArCbi3ae-D8/s320/wath1.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>In response to <a href="https://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.com/2024/02/toxic-behaviour-part-ii.html" target="_blank">this post</a> about the toxic behaviour of zionists, commenter "zoombats" mentioned <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/11/denouncing-critics-of-israel-as-un-jews-or-antisemites-is-a-perversion-of-history" target="_blank">an article in <i>The Guardian</i> by Kenan Malik</a> about how Jewish people who criticize Israel for abusing the Palestinians, or for being non-zionists (which is to say they espouse a universal humanitarianism and believe that states based on exclusionary grounds -- religious, ethnic, linguistic, whatever --- are illegitimate) are "Un-Jews" or "self-hating/antisemitic Jews."<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>I suppose it's an interesting question whether non-zionist Jews felt that zionists were "Un-Jews" if they thought that zionism was antithetical to Judaism. Personally I doubt it. non-zionist Jews probably just thought/think that their zionist brethren are wrong.</p><p>It starts off with the mid-20th Century case of Jewish activist-journalist for the <i>Jewish Chronicle</i>, William Zuckerman:</p><p class="dcr-vmkf2w" style="--source-text-decoration-thickness: 2px; background-color: #fef9f5; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #121212; font-family: GuardianTextEgyptian, "Guardian Text Egyptian Web", Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.0625rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;">Zuckerman might have been embraced by the Jewish establishment as a model public figure but for one problem. He was critical of the policies of the newly created Jewish state, especially towards Palestinian refugees, hundreds of thousands of whom had fled or been driven out and were now barred from returning. “The land now called Israel,” Zuckerman wrote, “belongs to the Arab refugees no less than to any Israeli.”</p><p class="dcr-vmkf2w" style="--source-text-decoration-thickness: 2px; background-color: #fef9f5; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #121212; font-family: GuardianTextEgyptian, "Guardian Text Egyptian Web", Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.0625rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;">Zuckerman’s advocacy for Palestinian refugees alarmed Israeli diplomats who successfully organised a behind-the-scenes campaign to prevent his work from being published in the Jewish press. “To have induced the <em class="dcr-vmkf2w" style="--source-text-decoration-thickness: 2px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.0625rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;">Jewish Chronicle</em> to dispense with the services of Mr Zuckerman is to have performed a real mitzvah,” rejoiced one official.</p><p class="dcr-vmkf2w" style="--source-text-decoration-thickness: 2px; background-color: #fef9f5; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #121212; font-family: GuardianTextEgyptian, "Guardian Text Egyptian Web", Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.0625rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;">The story of Zuckerman and his erasure is one of many told by Geoffrey Levin in his new book <em class="dcr-vmkf2w" style="--source-text-decoration-thickness: 2px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;"><a data-link-name="in body link" href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300267853/our-palestine-question/" style="border-bottom: 1px solid var(--article-link-border); border-image: initial; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Our Palestine Question</a></em>, on the forgotten history of Jewish dissent in America in the decades following the founding of Israel. It is one of several accounts that will be published this year exploring the history of <a data-link-name="in body link" href="https://nyupress.org/9781479829347/the-threshold-of-dissent/" style="border-bottom: 1px solid var(--article-link-border); border-image: initial; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">American Jewish opposition</a> to Zionism and support for the <a data-link-name="in body link" href="https://nyupress.org/9781479821457/unsettled/" style="border-bottom: 1px solid var(--article-link-border); border-image: initial; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Palestinian cause</a>.</p><p>Anyway, it's a good article. I do have an issue with the way some of the issues are framed though. For instance the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023 and Israel's response:</p><p><span style="background-color: #fef9f5; color: #121212; font-family: GuardianTextEgyptian, "Guardian Text Egyptian Web", Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures;">These studies provide an essential backstory to one of the keenest debates today within Jewish communities: how to respond to the murderous Hamas </span><a data-link-name="in body link" href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/13/israel-darkest-day-24-hours-of-terror-hamas-gaza" style="border-bottom: 1px solid var(--article-link-border); border-image: initial; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">attack on 7 October</a><span style="background-color: #fef9f5; color: #121212; font-family: GuardianTextEgyptian, "Guardian Text Egyptian Web", Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures;"> and to Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza. </span></p><p>Perhaps things had to be described in the traditional hypocritical way in order for Malik to be permitted to get such a radical article (for our propaganda system) pusblished in the first place. Or, perhaps, Malik has internalized the slanted persepctive of mainstream culture. For my part, I must always insist that Hamas's attack be identified for what it was: An attempt to take Israeli hostages to exchange for Palestinian hostages kidnapped by the apartheid Israeli state's military and intelligence agencies. Furthermore, it must be pointed out that many of the Israelis killed on October 7th were slaughtered by the IDF. These facts are not in dispute and the paint a much different picture of the Hamas attack. Also, note the double-standard of describing the Hamas attack as "murderous" but Israel's genocidal assault as merely being "subsequent" to the "murderous" action of Hamas.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ Before I forget, <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/hamas-israel-gaza-terrorism" target="_blank">here is an EXCELLENT essay about Hamas from Robert M. Schaible at CommonDreams</a> about Hamas and its history with Israel. ]</p><p><br /></p><p>Immediately after mentioning the "murderous" Hamas attack and Israel's "subsequent" assault on Gaza we get the following:</p><p><span style="background-color: #fef9f5; color: #121212; font-family: GuardianTextEgyptian, "Guardian Text Egyptian Web", Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures;">For many Jews, the existential threat posed by Hamas gives Israel the right to take any measures necessary to eliminate the organisation. </span></p><p>Excuse me; but just how does an "existential threat" justify killing 10,000 children? Let's break that ridiculous, disgusting, insane, evil premise down for a bit. First of all, if you read that CommonDreams article linked to above you will see that Hamas does NOT pose an existential threat to Israel. Also, even if you FALSELY attribute all the Israeli deaths on October 7th, 2023 to Hamas (which would be WRONG because many of those Israelis were slaughtered by the IDF) Hamas would still not pose an existential threat to Israel. And, finally, even if Hamas posed an existential threat to Israel, how does indiscriminately slaughtering innocent Palestinian men, women and children help Israel to defeat Hamas?</p><p>Framing the genocide of Palestinians as a "war" against Hamas obscures the obvious reality that Israel is DELIBERATELY slaughtering Palestinian civilians simply because they are Palestinian. Even framing things as if Hamas is using "human shields" and the IDF is wantonly demonstrating a criminal indifference for Palestinian lives by indiscriminately bombing to get at Hamas is inaccurate, because Israel consciously wants to obliterate ALL Palestinians, Hamas or not, because Israel is a murderously racist apartheid state run by religious degenerates.</p><p>Which is why Jewish people who reject zionism believe the following:</p><p><span style="background-color: #fef9f5; color: #121212; font-family: GuardianTextEgyptian, "Guardian Text Egyptian Web", Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures;">For others, whatever the horrors of the Hamas attack, the destruction of Gaza, the deaths of more than 25,000 people and the displacement of almost the entire population is unconscionable and cuts against the grain of Jewish ethical traditions.</span></p><p>In other words, these non-zionist Jews believe that humanity is humanity, human rights are human rights, oppression is oppression, wrong is wrong, no matter the religious-cultural makeup of those doing the killing and those doing the dying.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvnCVCxj6lsm3ANUcLi4QS74hbZYRVG1h5F0QZFo1mtPe2DXdz69352ontREYxG9zsEYBKTH3A5oClh7gBab6udxQYkUwQ8Z7cHBvlQp0G2Yd61jhsgBYXQXGsMJnh4u0peOGBWSlazOQiwnPkZ3Q5KZPHkYhuTvJDZA8WYt8bQFZFgIBTrTCreHE3j3jj/s1600/wath2.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1066" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvnCVCxj6lsm3ANUcLi4QS74hbZYRVG1h5F0QZFo1mtPe2DXdz69352ontREYxG9zsEYBKTH3A5oClh7gBab6udxQYkUwQ8Z7cHBvlQp0G2Yd61jhsgBYXQXGsMJnh4u0peOGBWSlazOQiwnPkZ3Q5KZPHkYhuTvJDZA8WYt8bQFZFgIBTrTCreHE3j3jj/s320/wath2.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>So, on the one side we have racist monsters and on the other side we have decent people. The decent people insist that 2+2=4 and the racist monsters believe something else that is stupid and insane.</p><p><span style="background-color: #fef9f5; color: #121212; font-family: GuardianTextEgyptian, "Guardian Text Egyptian Web", Georgia, serif; font-size: 17px; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures;">This cleavage has led to fractious debates over what it is to be Jewish and the meaning of antisemitism.</span></p><p>So my problem with this is that it is at all framed as some sort of genuine debate. This error starts with mischaracterizing Hamas and the Palestinians as some inscrutable threat, some irrational "other" that defies rational analysis. From this distortion, some self-interested parties can pretend that there is a legitimate debate over how to deal with it. Should we gleefully bomb them to fragments or not? And, is disagreeing with killing them all, or (even worse) criticizing killing them all "antisemitic"? </p><p>Still and all, it is an important essay. It goes on to talk about the [manufactured] crisis of campus antisemitism in the USA, the censorship of Jewish critics of Israel in Germany, and other issues, and it is pretty clear that Malik sympathizes with those humanitarian Jewish critics and disagrees with tarring them with the broad brush of antisemitism.</p><p>It's just that I think it's been too long that we have treated what is, in essence, a garbage perspective of being deserving of respectful debate. There are so many idiotic belief systems that pollute our world that we continue to have to endure and it would be better if they were treated with the absolute contempt they deserve.</p><p><br /></p><p class="dcr-vmkf2w" style="--source-text-decoration-thickness: 2px; background-color: #fef9f5; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #121212; font-family: GuardianTextEgyptian, "Guardian Text Egyptian Web", Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.0625rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/11/denouncing-critics-of-israel-as-un-jews-or-antisemites-is-a-perversion-of-history">Denouncing critics of Israel as ‘un-Jews’ or antisemites is a perversion of history | Kenan Malik | The Guardian</a></p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-52954925620555918452024-02-10T06:17:00.001-05:002024-02-12T09:08:41.884-05:00Toxic Behaviour Part II<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe29kNr6blDSbOyGKG5u0UAP8zm8dAshUHeklYZnWmeVN3HN4EdSi_1FDLHli-mXpIhzdmhkWMU7wtCYNFHwU2PO9HXtfkOfoPswgtl0JkqWNeaBjRrpArPbR-8OIjCeQ4xyEKlzEum4ZDtXqhl3-mLFSi1sGA7abGC7XdqK1Io3ymCBlVwbOIK2XCj-rj/s1800/yyz1.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1800" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe29kNr6blDSbOyGKG5u0UAP8zm8dAshUHeklYZnWmeVN3HN4EdSi_1FDLHli-mXpIhzdmhkWMU7wtCYNFHwU2PO9HXtfkOfoPswgtl0JkqWNeaBjRrpArPbR-8OIjCeQ4xyEKlzEum4ZDtXqhl3-mLFSi1sGA7abGC7XdqK1Io3ymCBlVwbOIK2XCj-rj/s320/yyz1.webp" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>In <a href="https://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.com/2024/02/toxic-behaviour-part-i.html" target="_blank">Part I</a> I mentioned how I saw a similarity between genocidal zionists and scumbag oil executives. How could these human beings be such complete, entitled assholes?</p><p></p><blockquote><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; font-size: 13.6188px;">It seems to me that they both share the same gross sense of entitlement and the same contempt for "others" and this is what allows these people (and others who possess their psychosis) to do what they do.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>How could right-wing, zionist, Israeli politicians and racist IDF goons act with such inhuman barbarism, blurt out idiotic rationalizations for their barbarism, and then shriek about "antisemitism" whenever their barbaric actions and racist talking-points are criticized? Could it be explained by the shamelessness of arrogance? Which is to say: They know that <i>we</i> know that they're fabricating when they say that condemnations of their crimes is "antisemitism." And they're grinning in our faces daring us to do something about it.</p><p>That might actually be the case with some of these individuals. However, on the other hand, I know personally of a few instances of North American Jewish people who feel genuinely threatened by antisemitism and who feel that criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>The first I'll mention is a guy I know as an acquaintance here in Toronto. We only interact once in a while on social media nowadays but we used to drink in the same social circle a few years ago. Young children at home and approaching forty years of age is preventing him from getting outside as often as he used to. His being Jewish was just something that came out in conversation at some point. He's not practicing so far as I know. He doesn't give off an Adam Sandler or even a Jerry Seinfeld kind of vibe. But it's part of who he is.</p><p>When this recent nightmare started, on October 8th he posted how, as a Jewish person, it rubs him the wrong way when people say they're not antisemitic "BUT" and then they start to criticize Israel. He hasn't posted anything on the subject since, and I don't know how he's feeling about it. I didn't get into it with him at the time because I don't know him that well and I was already dealing with someone else I knew who was having a genuine meltdown on zookerbook.</p><p>But before I mention that person, I'll discuss a woman I knew back in Hamilton several years ago. She was one of two Jewish women who worked at this non-profit human rights organization. (There were about eight people working there at any one time. I'd say that half of the people or one-third were always white people of Western European ancestry, with the rest being individuals (often female) from the rest of the world. The woman in question sent her kids to Hebrew school. Being Jewish was a very big part of her perception of who she was. When I knew her she was very concerned about subconscious antisemitism in people. For instance, even discussing <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/jews-in-hollywood-kanye-west-dave-chappelle-rabbi-explains-1234645366/" target="_blank">the factual basis of the Jewish presence in Hollywood</a>, was always (in her eyes) a hair's-breadth away from being a raving genocidal nazi. This was especially the case when it came to criticism of Israel. But she was genuine in her concern about human rights and social justice in general. Not surprisingly she REALLY disliked Noam Chomsky, whose stance on Israel was always "simplisitic" or "slanted" or "distorted" or "not the whole picture" in some always unspecified way. A year after my life took me to another city I'd heard from people that she'd resigned in anger condemning them all as antisemites for their criticisms of Israel. (I can't remember what year this was, or what recent violence had compelled the organization to speak out against Israel. It was sometime around the turn of the millenia.)</p><p>The point is that she was an intelligent, moral person who had a personal connection to Israel as a Jewish person and she stood by Israel regardless of its behaviour despite her sincere concerns about human rights elsewhere.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdaKr-2EytZuiNNzr0rYT540hvZdwA1Nf74txtPQ8qM6NC8UCYdLpd16qIC2P5lUhyphenhyphenxdJcuJpx5KCOGI57sdffGqGqfw8U5jqqjLwj-YLkTKhvKPoflJOvb-lFKNKDLXYMps8VYFMWlEXq31lBC7tFN99eAS11N1FQlSgU7MRdaGEL3T015S3SyihL7pTa/s1919/yyz2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="1919" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdaKr-2EytZuiNNzr0rYT540hvZdwA1Nf74txtPQ8qM6NC8UCYdLpd16qIC2P5lUhyphenhyphenxdJcuJpx5KCOGI57sdffGqGqfw8U5jqqjLwj-YLkTKhvKPoflJOvb-lFKNKDLXYMps8VYFMWlEXq31lBC7tFN99eAS11N1FQlSgU7MRdaGEL3T015S3SyihL7pTa/s320/yyz2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Which brings me to this young woman (well, late-thirties now I guess) who I also knew in Hamilton, but who was still a frequent participant in "activist" social media discussions I was participating in, up until the present time. A mutual friend of ours was posting criticisms of Israel's slaughters in Gaza and articles for information and news about an upcoming teach-in and this young woman told him that some people reading his stuff were Jewish and he should be more sensitive. Nothing he'd posted was at all relevant to her criticism. He'd spoken only of the acknowledged actions of the state of Israel.</p><p>My friend replied that Israel wasn't immune to being criticized when it acted in violation of international law. She replied that antisemitism was a real problem and for him to be careful. I read this exchange and noted her remark about "some people" in my friend's social media community were Jewish and I wondered if she, herself, was Jewish. I figured that since she'd said that that she probably was. But I didn't care one way or the other because it was entirely irrelevant to the issue of Israel's obligation to not slaughter an entire people. I think antisemitism is stupid and disgusting and even though I've educated myself out of the propaganda system's conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, I nonetheless am still sensitive when I see actual antisemitism pop up in discussions of Israel-Palestine or when Israel is discussed anywhere.</p><p>Obviously, since the genocide continued, my friend continued to post about it. The young woman became increasingly unhinged and got closer and closer to calling my friend an antisemite. Having already been called a "Jew-hating nazi" on a pro-Democrat blog's comments section earlier in the week, I decided to intervene before this argument between my friends got out of hand. I typed a slightly more formal and concise summary of the Israel-Palestine conflict as I've typed here over the years, about the origins of Zionism, the trauma of the Holocaust, the history of Palestine, the abuses of the Palestinians since 1967, the Israeli violations of Oslo, the origins of Hamas, the brutality of the IDF against the peaceful "March of Return" in 2018, only to have it all dismissed as a simplistic hash-job. (As usual, how and why it was simplistic and botched was left unsaid. I can't believe that I'm immune from the desire to perceive a thorough demolition of my point-of-view as "failed" without engaging with it. If anyone pointed my having done this out to me, would I even be able to recognize it?)</p><p>In the end, all of our efforts to explain to this person that the mass-bombardment of hospitals, refugee camps, houses, places where the IDF told civilians to gather, is mass-murder, and that remains true even if the IDF says the magic words "human shields" were wasted. We were both irredeemable antisemites and she left the conversation ranting about [<a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/11/beheaded-israeli-babies-settler-wipe-out-palestinian/" target="_blank">the now debunked</a>] stories of beheaded babies. (For all I know she's now having conniptions about other bullshit atrocity tales. While ignoring Israel's slaughter of <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/21/haaretz-grayzone-conspiracy-israeli-festivalgoers/" target="_blank">its own people</a> and <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240209-israeli-snipers-shoot-medical-staff-at-al-nasr-hospital-in-gaza/" target="_blank">assassinations of Palestinian doctors</a> and deliberate destruction of <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/15/biden-israels-gaza-hospitals-intelligence/" target="_blank">hospitals</a> and universities and cultural centers and places of worship.)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs4P84Sf5imge-Qg5moqz5kXP7-K3QHnAt1Vf5do2y7fCkYmZkHk32bfehG-0h0xx5wfhcJudqKpr7q34c_efGiK9p5s0RAJ-wfs8iY5E6BjybdKpv_h-4wy47kTgwA6pQugsfSQlLxO8KhI5H11HTxe433AIFk-l6whfSZX7EAvRF8GrTLqWq3SjhQH-M/s512/yyz3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="287" data-original-width="512" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs4P84Sf5imge-Qg5moqz5kXP7-K3QHnAt1Vf5do2y7fCkYmZkHk32bfehG-0h0xx5wfhcJudqKpr7q34c_efGiK9p5s0RAJ-wfs8iY5E6BjybdKpv_h-4wy47kTgwA6pQugsfSQlLxO8KhI5H11HTxe433AIFk-l6whfSZX7EAvRF8GrTLqWq3SjhQH-M/s320/yyz3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>The thing is, these three individuals aren't cynical agents of <a href="https://www.newarab.com/news/understanding-hasbara-israels-propaganda-machine" target="_blank">hasbara</a>. They're all decent people who have built an irrational emotional bond with Israel. And they've so "othered" people who don't adhere to this conflation of Israel with Jewishness that they can't bring themselves to accurately perceive when Israel goes off the rails. I don't watch Jimmy Dore regularly anymore, but occasionally YouTube will put something on my side-bar from him and I'll check it out. This story about a Jewish woman in Montreal yelling at another woman who was flying a Palestinian flag from her car is the same sort of stuff I've been talking about here. This woman obviously believes in the ridiculous lies about Hamas fighters taking time out, while Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships are firing at them, to gang-rape a Jewish woman and then play soccer with her body parts. Her belief in this garbage caused her to become so enraged at the sight of a Palestinian flag that she yells at the woman (whose children were in the car with her) that she'd like to see her raped and killed in front of her children, since, by flying that flag, she obviously celebrated that [fake] atrocity. This level of derangement is the opposite of cynicism. People like her have wholly embraced the one-sided world-view of a "team" and their team can do no wrong and will brook no criticism.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CF3a5INIPoI" width="320" youtube-src-id="CF3a5INIPoI"></iframe></div><br /><p>This sort of disgusting tribalism isn't inevitable. I've personally met many Jews here in Toronto who are actively opposed to Israel's behaviour over the past decades. In the USA <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/u-s-jews-connections-with-and-attitudes-toward-israel/" target="_blank">perhaps one-quarter of young Jewish people don't see Israel as important to them</a>. Just as there are Canadians who take it as a personal affront if Canada is criticized, and who are enraged by First Nations protesters, Quebec separatists, or opposition to our occupation of Afghanistan, while other Canadians think that actions that deserve criticism SHOULD be criticized.</p><p>We are all at risk of embracing this self-interested, self-righteous, self-pitying, persecution complex, hypocritical view of the world. Perhaps our "team" is just ourselves as individuals. Or it's our family or friends. Or our city or sports team or our nation. And, depending on what we perceive to get out of this alignment, and how we see opposition to it as detrimental to our self-interest, we can become quite violently defensive. Do you think refugees and immigrants threaten you economically? Do you rely on the oppression of minorities to build yourself up? Do you rely on the theft of Palestinian land and their exploitation for your own prosperity? Are you a greedy, selfish fuck-face who puts your own material prosperity above humanity? The more of an asshole you are, the more people will hate you and the more you will hate them.</p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-30471032194978050832024-02-06T06:28:00.002-05:002024-02-06T06:28:40.727-05:00El Salvador & Our Future<p> <a href="https://jacobin.com/2024/02/bukele-el-salvador-election-press" target="_blank">A right-wing authoritarian has won re-election in El Salvador</a>. A takeover of the judiciary was required to allow him to run for a consecutive term but his majority appears to be based on genuine election results.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As Rauda’s reporting shows, Bukele is expected to sweep the February 4 presidential election. With sky-high approval ratings since he declared a state of emergency in March 2022, Bukele’s lock ’em up approach to gangs has resonated with Salvadorans exhausted from relentless violence over the last half century. From the civil war to gang domination of many communities, collective trauma has become a <a href="https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1743459815387549999?t=08y8MF94nrNoqlkW0IHjWA&s=08" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 3px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">political commodity</a> in elections.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Reelection videos posted on the president’s social media platforms and making the rounds in traditional media provide emotional testimonies as to why average Salvadorans affected by gang violence stand with Bukele to say <a href="https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1743701379544121729?t=te7e0asRhQcgbeepu-u6HA&s=08" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 3px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;"><em style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box;">Nunca más</em></a> — “never again.” Coming on the heels of his state of exception tactic to break gang control by suspending constitutional rights, the media campaign appears to have been effective. Sixty-six out of every hundred Salvadorans have strong faith in the president, according to a <a href="https://uca.edu.sv/iudop/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Bol.-Eva-de-anio-2023.pdf" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 3px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">December 2023 poll</a> by the Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">...</span></p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Bukele’s ability to carry out his promise rests on maintaining public safety — contingent on keeping gangs unable to govern, and curbing the police, military, and narco violence. But multiple people pointed out to me that the main gang leaders were able to leave the country, in some cases aided by Bukele’s government. The increased security many people in El Salvador are experiencing under the state of exception is predicated on a false promise that the gangs, weakened at the moment, won’t come back. It also doesn’t account for the increase in violence from state actors, including police, military personnel, the judiciary, and penal system staff. But since such violence is not evenly distributed across the population, it hasn’t yet undercut Bukele’s popularity.</span></p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><p>This is what we all have to look forward to. Neoliberal economic policies impoverish the majority and make crime one of the few alternatives to a life of hopeless, grinding poverty. But the more people who turn to crime, the more criminals have to fight with each other to control access to the criminal economy. This means more violence in society. Which makes ordinary citizens cry out for relief. Which means the state imposes harsher penalties for criminals as well as giving the police more leeway to impose violence and abuse civil rights.</p><p>People don't care that they're slitting their own throats by empowering the police state. Many people are only capable of judging what is immediately before their eyes (such as crime) and of calling for "solutions" that are suggested to them from the hegemonic culture (getting "tough on crime" for instance). Social conservative morality steers them into self-destructive belief systems. (Besides getting "tough on crime" this also means demanding that teenage mothers be condemned to poverty instead of receiving suppport for themselves and their children. People who despise pregnant teenagers don't care about a weak welfare state because they'd rather proudly refuse welfare until the point where the neoliberal nightmare has brought them to the point of desperation. At which point they're too broken to be capable of anything but shameful gratitude.)</p><p>Meanwhile, local versions of Jeffrey Epstein live far away from the violence except when they send their subordinates out to negotiate with gangsters for some teenaged prostitutes.</p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-55586825263039221712024-02-05T15:37:00.004-05:002024-02-05T15:37:57.245-05:00The Oil Weapon<p> In 1973 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis" target="_blank">the Arab OPEC countries punished countries that had supported Israel</a> in the Fourth Arab-Israeli War by imposing an oil embargo on them.</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">In October 1973, the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_of_Arab_Petroleum_Exporting_Countries" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries">Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> (OAPEC) announced that it was implementing a total oil embargo against the countries who had supported </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Israel">Israel</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> at any point during the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Yom Kippur War">Fourth Arab–Israeli War</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">, which began after </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Egypt">Egypt</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> and </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Syria">Syria</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> launched a large-scale surprise attack in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to recover the territories that they had lost to Israel during the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Six-Day War">Third Arab–Israeli War</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">. In an effort that was led by </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_of_Saudi_Arabia" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Faisal of Saudi Arabia">Faisal of Saudi Arabia</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">,</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-2" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis#cite_note-2" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[2]</a></sup><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> the initial countries that OAPEC targeted were </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Canada">Canada</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Japan">Japan</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">, the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Netherlands">Netherlands</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">, the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="United Kingdom">United Kingdom</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">, and the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="United States">United States</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">. This list was later expanded to include </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estado_Novo_(Portugal)" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Estado Novo (Portugal)">Portugal</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesia" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Rhodesia">Rhodesia</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">, and </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="South Africa">South Africa</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">. In March 1974, OAPEC lifted the embargo,</span><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-USstate2ndCrisis_3-0" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis#cite_note-USstate2ndCrisis-3" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[3]</a></sup><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> but the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_of_oil" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Price of oil">price of oil</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> had risen by nearly 300%: from US$3 per </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_(unit)#Oil_barrel" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Barrel (unit)">barrel</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> ($19/</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_metre" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #3366cc; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Cubic metre">m<sup style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1;">3</sup></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">) to nearly US$12 per barrel ($75/m</span><sup style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1;">3</sup><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">) globally. </span></blockquote><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"></span><p></p><p>One wonders why they haven't done anything to punish those countries supporting Israel's nazi-like genocide of the people of Gaza. Obviously, there's the possibility that the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf monarchies are corrupt, bought-off autocrats who don't care about the Palestinians. But the other day I thought it might be possible that they don't want to hurt BRICs countries like Brazil, India and, most importantly, China.</p><p>Just some idle speculation on my part.</p><p><br /></p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-18227855845782797632024-02-04T12:13:00.004-05:002024-02-04T12:13:55.471-05:00Toxic Behaviour (Part I)<p> For some reason, I looked at the picture and the headline from CommonDreams:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyo7tsjkS6YFAFUkytW7yn3DO5s4SB7Di0JhLsnsdyAKvxsOwP_sDCivX2W_PCSzsDAPjq86Ffnr-fPbsrJMT5QYjfSvK5_7QbcpC3qcDJwwSd24PhXqKN-cmxcUZn0Z6xC5hKEkobGr5QaSRochfGikN42UMjj5YUQk1rKhfPeDX5OR_FzlDyk1AiY6zw/s1200/wirt1.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="1200" height="107" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyo7tsjkS6YFAFUkytW7yn3DO5s4SB7Di0JhLsnsdyAKvxsOwP_sDCivX2W_PCSzsDAPjq86Ffnr-fPbsrJMT5QYjfSvK5_7QbcpC3qcDJwwSd24PhXqKN-cmxcUZn0Z6xC5hKEkobGr5QaSRochfGikN42UMjj5YUQk1rKhfPeDX5OR_FzlDyk1AiY6zw/s320/wirt1.webp" width="320" /></a></div><p><span style="font-size: large;">"<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/exxon-chevron-record-shareholders" target="_blank">In 'Brazen Wealth Transfer' , Exxon and Chevron Pay Out Record Sums to Shareholders</a>"</span></p><p>... and I thought about the narcissism and entitlement of Israelis (as well a few Jewish individuals I've encountered here in Canada) who seem to think that they're justified in slaughtering Palestinians due to the fact that the Palestinians hate them for no reason other than crazed antisemitism. It seems to me that they both share the same gross sense of entitlement and the same contempt for "others" and this is what allows these people (and others who possess their psychosis) to do what they do.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>You remember Chevron don't you? Recently they lost a lawsuit in Ecuador and were found liable for having poisoned enormous swaths of Amazon rainforest that rendered the territories of many tribes unliveable. They haven't paid a dime of that settlement but the lawyer who won the lawsuit for the Amazonians, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/08/chevron-amazon-ecuador-steven-donziger-erin-brockovich" target="_blank">Stephen Donzinger</a>, lost his license, spent over two years under house arrest, and was eventually sentenced to six months in prison. [<a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/14/the-case-of-steven-donziger-supreme-court-liberals-help-turn-judges-into-prosecutors/" target="_blank">Here's a second story about this travesty</a> because it's so disgusting.]</p><p>Look at that guy's face. <a href="https://climateintegrity.org/news/chevron-ceo-michael-k-wirth" target="_blank">Michael Wirth</a>. Sells a product that's killing the planet. Knowingly poisons communities and eco-systems. Complete fucking asshole. Profit-gouger. It was these oil company thieves who helped contribute to the inflationary surge since 2020. And they take their billions of dollars in profits that they've taken out of our wallets (either through oil prices or from the subsidies our governments give them or from the natural disasters that our governments have to clean up) and they distribute it to their oligarch shareholders. $26.3 BILLION is a LOT of money. (Together with Exxon's $32.4 BILLION the total return to the oligarchs is close to SIXTY BILLION DOLLARS.)</p><p>How can they do this to us? And by "us" I mean "the rest of humanity." How can they be so insanely selfish? How can they be so arrogant and callous?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikEpi8LDY7mZEdLOR5jM2e_LBd9ykpv7JdlkrxW-nafQsUmmJhyphenhyphenSgTcBbuk6PGdP-JiJqstyhM0MJKWyUiKZ-aEaxWgVklXL3o0QRlVfrFQO9MzuFpISneu79Y5YBqsJMV_f1zEhCc9d7krWb1bFRPzOomoIcYoYtGj1lk-3GjCzvpK2wl9EMCrqLq0nZN/s1667/z1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1250" data-original-width="1667" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikEpi8LDY7mZEdLOR5jM2e_LBd9ykpv7JdlkrxW-nafQsUmmJhyphenhyphenSgTcBbuk6PGdP-JiJqstyhM0MJKWyUiKZ-aEaxWgVklXL3o0QRlVfrFQO9MzuFpISneu79Y5YBqsJMV_f1zEhCc9d7krWb1bFRPzOomoIcYoYtGj1lk-3GjCzvpK2wl9EMCrqLq0nZN/s320/z1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>To start: These <i>are</i> horrible people. Narcissists with shrivelled souls. People capable of exonerating themselves with the most embarrassingly shallow of rationalizations. People capable of insanity-level abilities of compartmentalization. But given the proper training and environment, most human beings are quite capable of at least approaching such behaviour. I will be talking about the significant number of Israeli citizens cheering the genocide in Gaza later. But for now, jut ponder how we North Americans compartmentalize that same tragedy, going about our business Christmas shopping, watching the Oscars and the Super-Bowl.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLnBt-HzIeEA24JsH4ifRzOug3IffN6K3e35uoyZPYcPaambQPrpHOS_fnKv7Zdq2OSPcyNDcaT_5ysBE3d4K-1IMQ1nKQLTBRrH2bidDdaiW2_8qON8lJqYuzzaCVeU67Zs2gh3BO3zBXTKq8X2f2IR2bdJgkA2uyJVQadhiC0LGsTwLT34eC1L8tR1aZ/s699/z2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="699" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLnBt-HzIeEA24JsH4ifRzOug3IffN6K3e35uoyZPYcPaambQPrpHOS_fnKv7Zdq2OSPcyNDcaT_5ysBE3d4K-1IMQ1nKQLTBRrH2bidDdaiW2_8qON8lJqYuzzaCVeU67Zs2gh3BO3zBXTKq8X2f2IR2bdJgkA2uyJVQadhiC0LGsTwLT34eC1L8tR1aZ/s320/z2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>So someone like Michael Wirth. Tail-end of the Baby-Boom Generation. He's had access to pretty much the same information about global warming as I've had. Perhaps his allegiance to the oil economy was concretized by reaching "maturity" six years earlier, before the "debate" about global warming turned irrevocably to the realists' (ie., those who espouse anthropogenic global warming) side. But even still: Poisoning huge areas of the Amazon? Abusing the legal system to avoid the consequences of this activity? Profit-gouging his entire nation and thereby risking an economic recession for hundreds of millions of people? Being involved with <a href="https://www.corp-research.org/chevron" target="_blank">all the nasty business Chevron is up to</a> all over the world?</p><p>It's my belief that somehow or other, Wirth and his fellow Chevron senior executives (all the people like them in the corporate world everywhere) have formed themselves a "community" from which everyone opposed to them is a dark, malevolent "other." An enemy to their well-being. Opponents to be bested. From there it can become a game perhaps. What are the things that need to be done, that can be done, to defeat these opponents? What is the most that can be extracted from these "others" to pad Chevron's, and their own, bottom lines?</p><p>Of course, being narcissists, these Chevron executives see everyone as a rival and a threat. Their own workers are an expense to be minimized. If US-American Chevron workers have unavoidable wage levels and safety levels to be paid, these are to be avoided as much as possible. And Chevron workers in countries with weaker worker protections are to be exploited to the maximum possible as well. These fellow executives are likewise rivals. The long and the short of it is that people like Michael Wirth at Chevron are insane. I know that I'd already said as much, but it beared repeating. They're INSANE. They do horrible, horrible things. The harm BILLIONS of people. They're monsters.</p><p>I feel compelled to stop for a second. Am I guilty of what I'm accusing Wirth and his ilk of doing? Haven't <i>I </i>just "othered" these oil executives? Haven't <i>I</i> made them my enemies to justify my attacks upon them? Obviously I'm going to say that I don't think so. You can judge my reasong: I am doing comparatively very little to make the atmosphere warm up to where sea levels will rise and flood coastal cities and temperatures will rise to make deserts hotter and ocean currents will change and plunge Europe into a deep-freeze and Greenland and Antartica will melt and croplands will fail and civilization will collapse into famine and war and ruin. I'm just not. And I am not raising the price of any good that I have for sale for no reason, to take advantage of supply-chain disruptions that had previously lowered the demand for my product. I am not selling a good that is essential for the current functioning of the economy so that when I raise the price for it higher than the inflation rate I am risking the health of that economy and thereby the well-being of billions of people.</p><p>To the extent that I am being directly harmed by people like Wirth (and, let's not forget <a href="https://powerbase.info/index.php/Exxon_Mobil:_Corporate_Crimes" target="_blank">the bad people at Exxon</a> who also raised the price of their product to enrich themselves and their fellow oligarchs at our expense) while, at the same time, I am doing nothing to actually harm such people, to that extent am I justified in seeing them as my enemies. For the time being civilization is going to require the use of fossil fuels. We should rapidly diminish our consumption of these fuels, but that need not mean reducing people like Wirth to homelessness and penury. The society that I envision is based on the moral of "Do unto others as you would have done unto you." A society where nobody is homeless or goes hungry because of deliberate policy.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTYwdTx_VddzPLN9nK1-w_s809efQqnZbt7B_H5VZixXeXQXzFiMq7H0Au-jx8F7LTGJgeW-S2-xsxA-vbAMU2ebNbtQ9gg3leNFVkooQ_UbN_U_5ffd8UUHdIptPbRZzsft6W2mRDMhATMVRZvzcO6904BOf2A0JHl_pCFgtBy41Lkkn2WvouDelaien-/s700/z3.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="700" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTYwdTx_VddzPLN9nK1-w_s809efQqnZbt7B_H5VZixXeXQXzFiMq7H0Au-jx8F7LTGJgeW-S2-xsxA-vbAMU2ebNbtQ9gg3leNFVkooQ_UbN_U_5ffd8UUHdIptPbRZzsft6W2mRDMhATMVRZvzcO6904BOf2A0JHl_pCFgtBy41Lkkn2WvouDelaien-/s320/z3.webp" width="320" /></a></div><p>I suppose that should have gone without saying. The root of the conflict between murderers and their victims, rapists and their victims, all abusers and their victims, involves the "othering" of each party. But one party did not invite this relationship. The victimized party has no obligation to consider the whole humanity of the oppressor and agonize about whether they're being "fair" to them. It's just that I must have some sort of what has become known as "Stockholm Syndrome" (<a href="https://geekxgirls.com/article.php?ID=13818" target="_blank">a long misunderstood term actually</a>) where I have apparently internalized the mindset of my oppressors. I have to justify my opposition to being abused. I have to justify making enemies of the people who don't care if their self-centered pursuits harm literally billions of people. Because I'm terrified of being portrayed as an example of "the angry, angry left." I have to defend my desire for collective goods like public healthcare and cooperative housing as not being the first step on the road to Stalinism or Hitlerism. I must assure people that my opposition to Israel's genocide of the people of Gaza is not "antisemitism." And my wish that Muslims not be forcibly converted to Christianity, or harassed as a terrorist population or deported is not a "libtard" desire to be subjected to "Sharia Law."</p><p>It's going to take more time to explain the connection between psychopathic oil executives and murderously racist Israelis than I have time for today. I think I'll post this now and finish it in a subsequent post.</p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-47023421125735081652024-01-31T13:54:00.001-05:002024-01-31T13:54:32.302-05:00Utterly Disgusted With Canada's Defunding of UNRWA<p> Can Canada sink any lower? This blog records my increasing disillusionment with my country, my fellow citizens, with humanity in general, over the years. And now, with Israeli cabinet ministers openly calling for ethnic cleansing (as they slaughter 30,000 civilians with bombs and are deliberately starving 2,000,000 more) I see the Trudeau government disgracing itself (and us) by <a href="https://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-disgraceful-justin-trudeau-genocide.html" target="_blank">defending Israel against charges of genocide</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/unrwa-israel-raids-investigations-1.7095676" target="_blank">defunding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)</a>. It does this disgusting act in response to the Apartheid State of Israel's allegations that a handful of Palestinians in Gaza who worked for UNRWA participated in the attacks on October 7th.</p><p>So fucking what? Even if these allegations are true, Hamas is no worse than the IDF. By any calculation. And de-funding UNRWA only serves to worsen the catastrophe of starvation and misery being perpetrated by those scumbags in the Netanyahu government.</p><p>Trudeau can make all the mewling noises that he wants; whether its <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/bob-rae-un-ceasefire-vote-1.7062053#:~:text=Canada%20voted%20Tuesday%20in%20favour,pattern%2C%20which%20traditionally%20supports%20Israel." target="_blank">voting for a ceasefire at the UN General Assembly</a> or <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/israel-gaza-hamas-netanyahu-biden-1.7099090" target="_blank">mildly rebuking an openly racist Israeli "Victory Conference" in Jerusalem</a>, where card-carrying members of the Israeli Nazi Party say shit like:</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">"They [Palestinians] will leave. We don't give them food, we don't give them anything. They have to leave," she said in English. "The world will accept them."</span></p><p>None of these token acts mitigate Trudeau's slavish devotion to Israeli apartheid or blind us to his complete lack of moral integrity.</p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-27766882165142922512024-01-26T09:53:00.001-05:002024-01-28T06:22:43.344-05:00Sad Comparisons<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhPy_u_2k7vBLRcA-6ckS-7NAy2BQhiEyZeGEINcw4CLpkiLdJchW1ExFevdXOeczbKBak5H9x0EvlmAXXJsdgud2-akapn_EkCXIoXsBcIi1I1_edtUjyiyDBBdzBMlJjyqHPhLKPi9szUQNR8d0Ap-H-CIa0MQ_cppIajoZPowwZLe0NnH2nz5YYeAtl/s2048/Sa1.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhPy_u_2k7vBLRcA-6ckS-7NAy2BQhiEyZeGEINcw4CLpkiLdJchW1ExFevdXOeczbKBak5H9x0EvlmAXXJsdgud2-akapn_EkCXIoXsBcIi1I1_edtUjyiyDBBdzBMlJjyqHPhLKPi9szUQNR8d0Ap-H-CIa0MQ_cppIajoZPowwZLe0NnH2nz5YYeAtl/s320/Sa1.webp" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>I'd been thinking about this subject before I read Caitlin Johnstone's great essay: "<a href="https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/01/25/gaza-is-exposing-western-liberals-for-the-frauds-they-are/" target="_blank">Gaza Is Exposing Western Liberals For The Frauds They Are</a>."</p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px;">Everything that mainstream liberals claim to oppose is on full display in Israel’s actions in Gaza. Racism. Fascism. Tyranny. Injustice. Genocide. Yet they must necessarily avoid throwing themselves into opposing these things there at all cost, because it would mean acknowledging that their own political allegiances are inseparably interwoven with them. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">It would mean turning against Biden during an election year. It would mean admitting that their entire political posture against Trump all these years has been a phony performance, because they’re tacitly endorsing all the things they claimed to hate about him. It would mean admitting their entire worldview is a lie, and that all their critics to their left have been correct.</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">The western liberal is therefore in the year 2024 engaged in an exhausting regimen of nonstop mental gymnastics to avoid having an authentic relationship with the reality of what’s happening Gaza. They squirm this way and that, twisting their gaze toward empty nonsense like Barbie movie Oscar snubs and Trump’s latest instance of verbal diarrhea to avoid looking at what’s happening. On those odd occasions when they are forced to confront the reality of Gaza they start spouting gibberish about how “complicated” and “heartbreaking” it is and how they hope there can be peace as soon as possible, while frenetically avoiding saying precisely how that “peace” should be brought about.</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">Gaza exposes the mainstream western liberal ideology for the kayfabe performance it always has been. The job of the so-called liberal “moderate” has never been to oppose racism, fascism, tyranny, injustice or genocide, their job is to perpetually give the thumbs-up to one head of the two-headed monster that is the murderous western empire. Their job is to help put a positive spin on a globe-spanning power structure that is fueled by human blood. To help elect Bidens and Starmers and Trudeaus and Albaneses who will ensure that the gears of the empire keep on turning completely unhindered while paying lip service to human rights and social justice.</p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"></p><p>For me, it was watching all my fellow Torontonians out Christmas shopping as this atrocity in Gaza was continuing as it had from October 7th onward. I wondered to myself how many of these people had gone an entire day without thinking about this deliberate mass-murder campaign going on with Canada's support.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>For my part, I'd been trying to find a group that would keep me informed of actions going on in Toronto that I could participate in. But I found it surprisingly difficult. Someone on my Fazebuck newsfeed would post notices for rallies on the day they were happening. When I already had something like an appointment planned or a volunteering thing scheduled. I joined a Fazebuck group purportedly about "Toronto Against Genocide In Gaza" but all they did was post memes that other people had made. My post asking for notification of upcoming actions was "held" until something about me could be "verified" and after three days of seeing memes, some of which I'd seen elsewhere, while my post still wasn't visible, I quit in disgust.</p><p>There was a Muslim-led group way out in Mississaugua that a Google search found for me but nothing on their website informed me of anything that I could do. I have since found a coalition of Jewish human-rights groups that will allow me to participate as a "supporter." I recently attended a march from the Royal Ontario Museum to the Israeli Consulate at Yonge and Bloor. (Before that I wrote an email letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly asking that Canada do the right thing and call for a ceasefire.)</p><p>But getting back to those Christmas shoppers; How many of them had thought about the genocide in Gaza during a 24-hour period? How many had ever thought that they should do something about it?</p><p>And then, one morning, I found out that they'd awarded the Oscars. And apparently some people got "snubbed" by The Academy and didn't win an award or didn't even get nominated (I don't know) and I thought, how grotesque that we're even talking about this when 30,000 people have been deliberately slaughtered and half-a-million more are being deliberately starved while they're forced to live in rubble exposed to the elements without clean drinking water or sanitation. And then, with Caitlin Johnstone's post, I decided to write about something that has been in my thoughts in recent days.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiLgbyUCVwf7FhqFchp3hMxnQ_tkY3UUBXGEO54WpntFDBqcCoOnmFQq7HrEHkLv_Jmiw3m86_jb3shLC86o-HV0DM3n38R1Hsk9JCzwja03F4A81hjYt31W_Ol-d3IBgpUKeLegUZwpSN8dQQgJMBZvN4D8ODdSNdRC5nRvemwV8IhyTrWBpHTg1mXVGr/s280/Sa2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiLgbyUCVwf7FhqFchp3hMxnQ_tkY3UUBXGEO54WpntFDBqcCoOnmFQq7HrEHkLv_Jmiw3m86_jb3shLC86o-HV0DM3n38R1Hsk9JCzwja03F4A81hjYt31W_Ol-d3IBgpUKeLegUZwpSN8dQQgJMBZvN4D8ODdSNdRC5nRvemwV8IhyTrWBpHTg1mXVGr/s1600/Sa2.jpg" width="280" /></a></div><br /><p>In a comparison between ourselves and the German people in the 1940's, how do we hold up? </p><p>In Europe in the 1940's there was a hideously enormous amount of antisemitism. The majority population was much more religiously Christian than it is today and so there was all the animosity against non-believers as well as the specifics of the delusional opinions many Christians then had about the role of the Jews. But there were also stereotypes about the Jewish character that the majority population believed which made many of them unsympathetic or even hostile to the Jews.</p><p>Today, there is an enormous amount of Islamophobia. Both the [often] right-wing "Christian" variety and the liberal-secular variety. Muslims are seen as believers in a degenerate religion, a "death-cult" that seeks to impose its Medieval values on everyone else. (Israeli zionists believe this even more strongly, but I'm going to focus on Canada/North America.) There is a widespread belief that Muslims are more prone to "terrorism" than other people. They are irrational people who refuse to live peacefully with other cultures. They're always going on a "Jihad" against other peoples to try to forcibly convert them to their archaic, intolerant ways. (Sometimes this stereotype is thought of as being only peculiar to Arabs [which is what the Palestinians are] and other times being a Muslim Arab is considered to be a "double whammy" of violence and fanaticism.)</p><p>How many Canadians do you think have some stupid notion in their heads that, while the murder of thousands of children is always bad, the problem with Gazans is that they "support Hamas" which is an intolerant, terrorist, antisemitic group. If they'd only have "risen up" and overthrown Hamas none of this would have happened. And therefore, while very few such Canadians would clearly articulate this, they probably have some lazy, incoherent notion that the murder of these thousands of children, while "regrettable" is also somewhat "understandable."</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdbWiuf6LI2GsKrcA-Plhu_qnaBvlGcqH_KMRMUO4jId6vbpj8hkChYAV1BNWr2RFA6WrUWIeOcRFR2L7reR9Iu3rbE1LoV2AHuoMGLE_uCWjjCtEmL89uMMZjUJ9sJ9f3oE63iLKqTgXWUAnEI_ydHnLQiHPMHe30XFDD-IBe9i_29Ok3MxACYAdEZhNC/s1440/Sa3.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1440" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdbWiuf6LI2GsKrcA-Plhu_qnaBvlGcqH_KMRMUO4jId6vbpj8hkChYAV1BNWr2RFA6WrUWIeOcRFR2L7reR9Iu3rbE1LoV2AHuoMGLE_uCWjjCtEmL89uMMZjUJ9sJ9f3oE63iLKqTgXWUAnEI_ydHnLQiHPMHe30XFDD-IBe9i_29Ok3MxACYAdEZhNC/s320/Sa3.webp" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>What did the Germans know about The Holocaust? With regards to the slaughter in the east (in Poland and the captured lands of the Soviet Union) it appears that there was some effort to suppress knowledge of what was going on. There doesn't appear to have been any attempts to publicize it and broadcast it to the world as a great victory. But soldiers returning home on leave, or, perhaps, in letters home, doubtlessly spoke of what they'd seen and this would have filtered out to the wider German society as stories or at least rumours. Words that were often received third-hand, so to speak.</p><p>For the German Jews and those from Western and Central Europe, the offical lie was that they were being relocated. The same way that Canadians and US-Americans were mostly supportive or apathetic about how the ethnic Japanese in our countries were dispossessed of their property and herded into prison-camps in the interior, many Germans believed the same thing was happening to the Jews. Maybe people living near the camps could figure out what was going on. Maybe some of them couldn't. There were no news reels playing in the theatres about the death camps. There were no radio broadcasts about them. There were no newspaper articles by investigative journalists outlining the horrors. </p><p>In short, whatever the Germans (who were not soldiers or SS) knew was what they had been told, often at third-hand, about the crimes of their government.</p><p>Whereas with us, ... well, we have been actually watching the slaughter on our screens. Cameras show us the carnage. We've seen the image of the dead civilians. We've heard immediately about children undergoing amputations without anaesthetics. We know RIGHT NOW that Gaza is being denied food and water.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEPN852NapjvvVVbIu_2r4E-u9b3Q1gnCgYuwHZf0VynQbRQceDlul1qXJTJSXjgfbfCijnKD5Zr30fkMoGjpNUOYrjBXTFzmVJV_aVFtxKAOulEvY3aXNyLdQ8RK3EXyTxsP6SXoluupGdcVT1PEVOsDDtJpkGAHDV5NwnVlNzzmRPGh8Lnay6s28E_a1/s864/Sa4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="864" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEPN852NapjvvVVbIu_2r4E-u9b3Q1gnCgYuwHZf0VynQbRQceDlul1qXJTJSXjgfbfCijnKD5Zr30fkMoGjpNUOYrjBXTFzmVJV_aVFtxKAOulEvY3aXNyLdQ8RK3EXyTxsP6SXoluupGdcVT1PEVOsDDtJpkGAHDV5NwnVlNzzmRPGh8Lnay6s28E_a1/s320/Sa4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Apparently Adolph Hitler had a prodigious memory for facts and details. It's said that he was able to overawe even his generals with his knowledge of the military facts of given situations in order to get them to submit to his arguments. He also had supreme self-confidence in his semi-coherent view of the world. This being a "fascist" view of the world, which, as I've argued elsewhere, consists of a hodgepodge of any society's "traditional" (which really just means "long-held") beliefs. Authority is good. Crime is bad. Homosexuals are vile. Patriarchy is awesome. Poverty is self-inflicted. Whatever. In mid-20th Century Germany, we could add that the military is great, defeat in World War I was caused by liberals, socialists and Jews, and (relatedly) that the Jews are the enemy within.</p><p>This is my roundabout way of saying, that in many ways, Hitler was something of a major idiot. Despite the fact that HE invaded Poland when both Britain and France had clearly stated that that line was the one line that he shouldn't cross, and despite the fact that HE invaded the Soviet Union when Stalin was still adhering to the Germany-USSR non-aggression pact, nonetheless Hitler would blather about how it was the Jews who had started these wars and that therefore it was the Jews who were going to be punished.</p><p>In the same way, despite the fact that Israel was founded on the violent dispossesion of Arab lands in the Nakba of 1948, and despite the fact that by the 1990's Oslo Accords the Palestinians had resigned themselves to the West Bank and Gaza, Israel continues to see itself as the victim. Despite its continued violations of the Oslo Accords and its continued theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank, it believes that it is the Palestinians who are attacking <i>them</i> without reason. Despite the fact that Hamas was supported in its early days by Israel to divide the Palestinians and weaken the Palestine Liberation Organization, and despite the fact that Hamas only rose in popularity due to Palestinian Authority's acquiesence to Israeli violations and abuses, Israeli extremists continue to bray about the violence and intolerance of Hamas. They portray the Hamas attack on October 7th as this completely out-of-nowhere atrocity. In so doing, the Netanyahu government shows itself to be of the same cloth as the Nazis.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYTlcqPR9K6qLc7FpqdUWDq57vS7TPDQsT0UxdEFiVtO5Z0U5a-ap8_k_jue_Jf4eJoeZLzUz81ZP8lz5y2ywRFEkXa2H2SKfoGh_v3Q0kseSj5wK6qeVLXTeoqRz-tX57F2nEusvj6gfrwRFpNhd6RSE_EqAwW4N5xmHR1nphxDl8izW2PM03ATrSyR9d/s976/Sa5.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYTlcqPR9K6qLc7FpqdUWDq57vS7TPDQsT0UxdEFiVtO5Z0U5a-ap8_k_jue_Jf4eJoeZLzUz81ZP8lz5y2ywRFEkXa2H2SKfoGh_v3Q0kseSj5wK6qeVLXTeoqRz-tX57F2nEusvj6gfrwRFpNhd6RSE_EqAwW4N5xmHR1nphxDl8izW2PM03ATrSyR9d/s320/Sa5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Ordinary Germans in World War Two had to think about getting through their own lives. As do we. Some of them were no doubt enthusiastic antisemites and supporters of the nazi dictatorship. But many were not. Just like us, many were "progressive" and probably more were apolitical. But they all had to make a living. There was a war on. Some families had fathers, sons or brothers at the fighting fronts. Some people were homeless from Allied bombing raids and were thinking about finding a place to live. Some people were trying to get ration cards to feed their families. Some were looking for work as their original workplaces had been destroyed by bombs. Towards the end of the war, when the Holocaust of the Western European Jews accelerated, these ordinary Germans were often traumatized, hungry, uprooted themselves. And, obviously, there was the fact that Germany was a fascist dictatorship. What would have happened to anyone who wrote letters to the state condemning the treatment of the Jews (or any of the other minorities targetted by the Nazis)? Imagine what would have happened to a protest rally!</p><p>Whereas us? Well, thanks to the failures of late-capitalism to provide economic stability for the majority, many of us are genuinely stressed about the cost-of-living. Many of us are overwhelmed by the seeming unstoppability of global warming. Many of us are having nitwit debates about COVID-19 and "plandemics." A lot of brainwashed people are terrified that Russia, China and Iran want to kill us (for no reason whatsoever). But, on the other hand, we certainly don't have to worry about being arrested and sent to a concentration camp for speaking our mind. A LOT of us are doing okay. A LOT of us can find the time to worry about the Oscars that "The Barbie Movie" didn't win. A LOT of us are doing the same stupid things that we always do without giving a second thought to the vile, murderous, racist, abominable, cruel, indefensible mass-murder GENOCIDE of the Palestinians by Israeli nazis.</p><p>And there's no excuse for that.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUER_p5VGV4jHwdt9oxdU56yFkFL3FKcn4j-ChtKMzhePhSVSpYW5HeD9w1IsRI59EIHKUUQUYQ62nhPsQta1N5DLOZw8lNI2IDHYRei7D_WHcWvJh0BHZ0QCXsBUuVBoXRw5wXk28UTG4740dIeYju2_C1B9WIcK8V1LeJ_9N5JoitRd4FeUaSlpJQrMO/s2048/Sa6.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUER_p5VGV4jHwdt9oxdU56yFkFL3FKcn4j-ChtKMzhePhSVSpYW5HeD9w1IsRI59EIHKUUQUYQ62nhPsQta1N5DLOZw8lNI2IDHYRei7D_WHcWvJh0BHZ0QCXsBUuVBoXRw5wXk28UTG4740dIeYju2_C1B9WIcK8V1LeJ_9N5JoitRd4FeUaSlpJQrMO/s320/Sa6.webp" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-67705198622711491082024-01-21T09:20:00.001-05:002024-01-21T09:20:33.687-05:00Liberal Foreign Minister's Support for Genocide is a "9 to 5" Thing<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf3HSsWaCvBOnQI7CDM39C-l5fI2rLA2PW0azN5zPTGphDLacZvvzimJ_OayoJNyyqsnEbxfwe8_JtVsW61fTQ9dlZyqU7SsYrCZi6hykdp3BG-Zs39vCzTZcvYUF2GJT2zMAnpDzQeInt16sBjWITD-NuACCdwAZns5Vl6Kll0xz8gTXYIvoQD6jxgoXe/s1205/tlp.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1205" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf3HSsWaCvBOnQI7CDM39C-l5fI2rLA2PW0azN5zPTGphDLacZvvzimJ_OayoJNyyqsnEbxfwe8_JtVsW61fTQ9dlZyqU7SsYrCZi6hykdp3BG-Zs39vCzTZcvYUF2GJT2zMAnpDzQeInt16sBjWITD-NuACCdwAZns5Vl6Kll0xz8gTXYIvoQD6jxgoXe/s320/tlp.webp" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><a href="https://yvesengler.com/2024/01/14/pointing-out-the-horrors-of-gaza-at-politicians-doorsteps/" target="_blank">Canadian MP's are universally pissed-off</a> that protesters rallying against Canada's support for Israel's genocide of the Palestinians went to Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly's home:<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 32.4px; margin: 0px 0px 1.1em; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 32.4px; margin: 0px 0px 1.1em; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">On Saturday 100 or so rallied in front of foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly’s home in the Plateau Mont Royal neighborhood of Montréal. Their promotional material declared “<a href="https://www.instagram.com/arthouseto/p/C2C92DLAZFT/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #bc4747; margin-bottom: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s, background-color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Mourn</a> the Dead, and Fight Like Hell for the Living. End Canadian Support for Genocide”. They reportedly read poems, played music and shared food in what spokesperson Eli Tareq El-Bechelany Lynch called “an affirmation and honouring of Palestinian life, creativity, and resistance against the Canadian-backed Israeli death machine.”</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 32.4px; margin: 0px 0px 1.1em; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Predictably, pro-genocide voices flew into a moralizing rage. They denounced it as “<a href="https://twitter.com/AnnieKoutrakis/status/1746306478489636886" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #bc4747; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s, background-color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">intimidation</a>” and “<a href="https://twitter.com/RealAndyLeeShow/status/1746241815165251977" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #bc4747; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s, background-color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">harassment</a>”. Uber Zionist Toronto MP Kevin Vuong proclaimed, “<a href="https://twitter.com/KevinVuongMP/status/1746239165459546280" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #bc4747; margin-bottom: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s, background-color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">If you’re</a> going to protest in front of the legislature or city hall, go ahead. If you’re going to protest our offices, have at it. But your right to peaceful assembly does not include protesting at Minister Melanie Joly’s home. Leave her family—and our families—out of it.”</p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 32.4px; margin: 0px 0px 1.1em; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"></p><p>How in the hell you can do something as loathsome as actively supporting a genocide and then actually expect people to conform to your self-serving definition of "civility" and "decency"! "Genocide" is the sundering of all the rules of decent, civilized behaviour.</p><p>This doesn't mean that protesters against genocide are justified in acts of barbarism themselves. But hearing chants against your despicable, inhuman behaviour outside your home shouldn't be unexpected if you sink as low as Canada's government has. Besides, it's not as if the protesters aren't already being condemned for their other actions elsewhere:</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"></span></p><blockquote>A week ago, the apartheid lobby claimed a rally in front of Vuong’s constituency office was intimidation. The same voices criticizing the protest at Joly’s home have spent weeks condemning rallies on an overpass over Highway 401 in Toronto. Before that they denounced anti-genocide rallies at the Eaton Centre and at municipal politician’s fundraiser. When university was in session, they were deploring protests on various campuses. They essentially believe all manifestations of opposition to Canada’s complicity in genocide is illegitimate.</blockquote><p></p><p>Remember, if a Jewish student hears "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" at a campus rally against the genocidal policies of the Israeli state, that is supposed to be soul-destroying. But if a Palestinian student sees a pro-Israel rally, a rally for a state that is <i>actively</i> depopulating the West Bank and conducting an illegal siege of Gaza, that is to be accepted as the natural way of the world.</p><p>[Engler specifically mentions the bleatings of a few NDP MPs in defence of Joly's right to rest and relaxation following a hard day of serving brain-dead, inhuman imperialism. The NDP remains a flawed institution. <a href="https://www.ceasefire.ca/the-ndp-and-the-green-party-of-canada-call-for-canada-to-support-icj-decisions-in-the-israeli-genocide-case/?fbclid=IwAR2zaQiV72a5z0OPc6hr7l34hAPNp2yL8FvZfIsuDPdDBriI3q1IeReQjtA" target="_blank">But at least they and the Greens support South Africa's case against Israel at the International Court of Justice</a>.]</p><p>Canadian police going to Israel to learn "crowd control" techniques from Israel isn't supposed to bother anyone. Fund-raising for Israel (which is tax-deductible) while Gaza is under siege is supposedly unobjectionable. Israel exporting products from the Occupied Territories as their own isn't offensive.</p><p>I don't know what else to say.</p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-82470698121940491452024-01-18T19:29:00.019-05:002024-03-16T17:53:41.742-04:00thwap's 2024 readings<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG9TfTBj7YMtttXMm3vlz8fiHrVTeStselzI8Ix57iPgw13nIpz0VIirPg7T8yWEo-wKoczQ7rENgceyH__b3V2avdcLikxeVEpVnNvLzc5pRzpbaVkxY-on5p0r_PDOl2Ne5Khjv6OKU6wdqytd93piG5dBM2HmX8XbTHvDvfE8s2TZhnDcw1wmFniOTJ/s685/xomic12.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="685" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG9TfTBj7YMtttXMm3vlz8fiHrVTeStselzI8Ix57iPgw13nIpz0VIirPg7T8yWEo-wKoczQ7rENgceyH__b3V2avdcLikxeVEpVnNvLzc5pRzpbaVkxY-on5p0r_PDOl2Ne5Khjv6OKU6wdqytd93piG5dBM2HmX8XbTHvDvfE8s2TZhnDcw1wmFniOTJ/s320/xomic12.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Well, another year. (Here's <a href="https://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.com/2023/01/thwaps-post-wherein-he-shall-list-books.html" target="_blank">last year</a>. Here's <a href="https://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.com/2021/09/latest-reads.html" target="_blank">the first book depository</a>.)</p><p>2024-01-18</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqvomm2WwV9XF267y6JoLe7db-poVVeI-kFs445G79ShTM78b7nUa64jme4JC2_BvUVXBsv5NYygsTAgvE2hRAYBKf1adQuJZNGHnSs23IVl3fuMLDfKGnmHI7afRUZauhnho6_89W8p8k9P6Tl7RVd8Dv9F1_L6gtOjuD5TwLn6muFEb-HpDL2oF3R9db/s1080/sol1.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqvomm2WwV9XF267y6JoLe7db-poVVeI-kFs445G79ShTM78b7nUa64jme4JC2_BvUVXBsv5NYygsTAgvE2hRAYBKf1adQuJZNGHnSs23IVl3fuMLDfKGnmHI7afRUZauhnho6_89W8p8k9P6Tl7RVd8Dv9F1_L6gtOjuD5TwLn6muFEb-HpDL2oF3R9db/s320/sol1.webp" width="320" /></a></div><br />Today I finished Gabriel García Márquez's <i><a href="https://literaryfictions.com/reviews/one-hundred-years-of-solitude-a-capsule-book-review/" target="_blank">One Hundred Years of Solitude</a></i>.<p></p><p style="background-color: rgba(252, 251, 249, 0.9); box-sizing: inherit; color: #726b60; font-family: Merriweather, serif; font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; text-align: justify;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"></em></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: rgba(252, 251, 249, 0.9); box-sizing: inherit; color: #726b60; font-family: Merriweather, serif; font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; text-align: justify;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">One Hundred Years of Solitude</em> can be read and enjoyed as merely a chronological sequence of events in the lives of the Buendia family, but it helps to know something of the underlying meaning. Gabriel García Márquez uses a fantastic fictional story as an expression of reality, with myth and history overlapping. Myth serves as a vehicle to transmit history to the reader. For example, the characters in the novel experience the Liberal political reformation of their colonial way of life, the arrival of the railway, the Thousand Days’ War (1899-1902), the corporate hegemony of the “banana company,” the cinema, the automobile, and the massacre of striking workers.</p><p style="background-color: rgba(252, 251, 249, 0.9); box-sizing: inherit; color: #726b60; font-family: Merriweather, serif; font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; text-align: justify;">The inevitable and inescapable repetition of history is a dominant theme in <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">One Hundred Years of Solitude</em>. Márquez reiterates the metaphor of history as a circular phenomenon through the repetition of names and characteristics belonging to the Buendía family. The characters are controlled by their pasts and the complexity of time. Throughout the novel the characters are visited by ghosts that are symbols of the past and the haunting nature that the past has over their lives.</p></blockquote><p style="background-color: rgba(252, 251, 249, 0.9); box-sizing: inherit; color: #726b60; font-family: Merriweather, serif; font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; text-align: justify;"></p><p>I found the writing to be quite poetic at times. There was a sense of history and grandeur and folly and farce and wisdom. At other times I felt like Marquez was a little too in love with his own talent.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>2024-01-24</p><p>I don't really like ebooks. But sometimes I don't feel like lugging a physical book around with me. So I got something short. Britannica Educational Publishing's <i><a href="https://books.telegraph.co.uk/Product/Britannica-Educational-Publishing/Ancient-Rome/16223342" target="_blank">Ancient Rome</a></i>, Michael Anderson ed.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio9rhdOfvNAjmOUJD9BVV7A77hyN8NPX00JAc7e919UwZ2UvvcbD_nfAdPndgmpRJ0xIaGIr8MTLSFKRZb69iUvoVm1x9Vjyv13bEmSJN3ygcBLiyKyzxYx69GaYVOC-d5PPu2tfWDzTwjWZDQ1ZaMAdFG3o1JFJStr6E3IttFF-jTH1xlCaC57GBdHmdu/s640/ROME.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="479" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio9rhdOfvNAjmOUJD9BVV7A77hyN8NPX00JAc7e919UwZ2UvvcbD_nfAdPndgmpRJ0xIaGIr8MTLSFKRZb69iUvoVm1x9Vjyv13bEmSJN3ygcBLiyKyzxYx69GaYVOC-d5PPu2tfWDzTwjWZDQ1ZaMAdFG3o1JFJStr6E3IttFF-jTH1xlCaC57GBdHmdu/s320/ROME.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p>I wouldn't say it's "provocative." It DOES very succintly talk about a lot of important stuff, such as the attempts of the Plebians to challenge the Patricians and the descent into imperialism; Roman literature; Rome's wars; Roman architecture. It's only 88 electronic pages!!!</p><p>2024-01-30</p><p>Yesterday I finished reading Jon Ronson's <i><a href="https://reason49.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/review-of-jon-ronsons-the-psychopath-test/" target="_blank">The Psychopath Test</a></i>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhggXq4OGWbNX6Po-iCu_O3KDmju-UrMxMYWk-84VtzKrxG5oVaPZJSZ1K_Frho8EjINaja_T23HRHfS_d0EzpxVhG2UrJvBMObVSuML00CMtxWyAxnLK9_XRIRB-QkCfZ6tLjerVtpqfJudwT7jH58UJj9YLNyIjUwL8HuHWMTIfB3L1iD7HF1kUDjgeN6/s342/ronson.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="342" data-original-width="228" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhggXq4OGWbNX6Po-iCu_O3KDmju-UrMxMYWk-84VtzKrxG5oVaPZJSZ1K_Frho8EjINaja_T23HRHfS_d0EzpxVhG2UrJvBMObVSuML00CMtxWyAxnLK9_XRIRB-QkCfZ6tLjerVtpqfJudwT7jH58UJj9YLNyIjUwL8HuHWMTIfB3L1iD7HF1kUDjgeN6/s320/ronson.webp" width="213" /></a></div><br /><p>Ronson is his usual funny naif self.</p><p data-adtags-visited="true" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><em>The Psychopath Test</em> is funny, informative, and even suspenseful. I want to point out the first chapter in particular: the first chapter might be the best thing Ronson has ever done as a writer. The book begins with Ronson learning about a series of self-made books that have been distributed to an exclusive group of people internationally. The people who receive these books are primarily academicians and intellectuals, but no one can quite discern WHY they received this cryptic book. The book itself seems to be a coded message, and many of its passages are ominously foreboding. Ronson attempts to get to the bottom of this mystery, and it launches him into search for what makes a psychopath. This first chapter was such a joy to read, and things become so crazy and strange — Ronson makes for a good character to lead us down this rabbithole. If you are on the fence regarding this book, sample the first several passages on Amazon, and that should be your litmus test.</p><p data-adtags-visited="true" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">The story that is told in the first chapter ultimately serves as the smoking gun for what comes later. Ronson interviews alleged psychopaths in a mental ward, researchers who pioneered work in psychopathy, the man who developed the current scale used to diagnose psychopaths, a psychopathic millionaire CEO, one of the first criminal profilers, and the man who devised the current form of the DSM (more on that in a bit). I do a lot of work in the field of psychology, so a lot of this information was not particularly new. However, with that said, the materialthat wasn’t new to me was still fun to revisit. Ronson retells a lot of this information with incredulously wide eyes and in a dry, witty way that’s hard not to love. If you’ve read any of Ronson’s work before, you know that the man is a very anxious, neurotic individual. This trait is accentuated here as Ronson travels among murders and other unhinged individuals. As Ronson becomes more involved in the subject matter, the more neurotic and paranoid he gets. Is he himself a psychopath? Are psychopaths going to find him and kill him for exposing him?</p><p class="inline-ad-slot" data-adtags-visited="true" data-adtags-width="580" id="inline-ad-0" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; float: left; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; height: 0px; margin: 0px auto; overflow: hidden; width: 580px;"></p><p data-adtags-visited="true" style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Interestingly, I found that most of the best moments in this book came from when Ronson was interviewing the perfectly “sane” people — the researchers who have spent their lives trying to pinpoint the identity of psychopaths seem to show the most psychopathic traits. This point is overtly made in one of Bob Hare’s seminars. Hare is the inventor of the current scale used to assess for psychopathy, and one of the members of his audience stands up and proclaims the man to be a psychopath himself. Hare, along with some of the researchers in the field all exhibit strange, quirky mannerisms, and their curious interviews were more interesting than, say, when Ronson interviews a mass murderer later in the book. To that point, hearing about the creation of the Diagnostic Statistics Manual (or DSM; the handbook on which ALL current abnormal psychological disorders are diagnosed and informed) was one of the highlights for me. When this interview comes late in the book, it feels only tangentially related to the main thread of <em>The Psychopath Test</em>, but as someone who works in the field, I was captivated by the story behind the influential manual.</p><p>It's clear from the testimony of some people that they really do lack any understanding of how other people feel. But the case of Al "Chainsaw" Dunlap shows the dangers of generalizing. Dunlap is clearly a selfish, self-centered, self-important asshole. But not a psychopath.</p><p>2024-02-01</p><p>Just finished Scott Anderson's <i><a href="https://www.attackofthebooks.com/review-lawrence-in-arabia-by-scott-anderson/" target="_blank">Lawrence in Arabia: Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East</a></i>. (It was published in 2013.)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIpy6GJG6loYg3WLdd24c9bzMSo8wZ3DAdVK0DvEQ8rcNdm82pmyid1WCqFIlBiL78Y5wOwtjJvjvE2lPEU0Toi5CHqTnmSkJJy8lJ1KnLZnXQ1XdKGEEUc-PyMlSP7Nv2SNmOSUUM8vOC8tORgXnmJwktQQvONK1V8Kc8hXntp8uNDfHv2iuwXaDqVl-i/s350/q1.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="232" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIpy6GJG6loYg3WLdd24c9bzMSo8wZ3DAdVK0DvEQ8rcNdm82pmyid1WCqFIlBiL78Y5wOwtjJvjvE2lPEU0Toi5CHqTnmSkJJy8lJ1KnLZnXQ1XdKGEEUc-PyMlSP7Nv2SNmOSUUM8vOC8tORgXnmJwktQQvONK1V8Kc8hXntp8uNDfHv2iuwXaDqVl-i/s320/q1.jpeg" width="212" /></a></div><p>From the link:</p><div data-block="true" data-editor="adqfp" data-offset-key="8qeqd-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #534640; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8qeqd-0-0"><span data-offset-key="8qeqd-0-0">So let me come right to the point: Scott Anderson does not disappoint with <a href="https://amzn.to/3c3WvnU" style="color: #66c0c0; text-decoration-line: none;"><em>Lawrence in Arabia</em></a>. While nominally naming his book after Lawrence, he expands his story to three other scions of the age who also participated in the forces that transformed the political lines of the area. Here we have Curt Prufer, a mid-level German diplomat, Aaron Aaronsohn, an accomplished agronomist who was also a committed Zionist, and William Yale, an American and son of a down-on-its-luck upper-class family who somehow found himself looking for petroleum resources for Standard Oil on the sly. Their paths intertwine and overlap, and each becomes a protagonist in their own right as much as Lawrence, leaving me as intrigued with each as I was with him. As a rose by any other name is still a rose, each becomes in one form or another a spy for their own people, whether Prufer for Germany, Aaronsohn for Zionism, and Yale for Standard Oil, and them for the Americans.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="adqfp" data-offset-key="18m3j-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #534640; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="18m3j-0-0"><span data-offset-key="18m3j-0-0"> </span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="adqfp" data-offset-key="au7mu-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #534640; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="au7mu-0-0"><span data-offset-key="au7mu-0-0">To be sure, the underlying tragedy here is that each is really just part of a sideshow while the greater narrative—World War I—is centered elsewhere, boiling over into the Middle East in the contest of empires that caused the death and suffering of so many, not just on the frontlines of the battles, but as resources and crops and materials were gobbled up and taken for the war effort. Here we see the Turks killing the Kurds, the Jews and Arabs competing for survival, and the British and French (and to a lesser extent the Americans) competing for lines on a map for the prestige of empire.</span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="adqfp" data-offset-key="5ce87-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #534640; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5ce87-0-0"><span data-offset-key="5ce87-0-0"> </span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="adqfp" data-offset-key="9ge6i-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #534640; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9ge6i-0-0"><span data-offset-key="9ge6i-0-0">It’s a tragedy.</span></div></div><p>Given the horrors since 2013, especially the Israeli Nazi Party's genocide of the Palestinians happening at this very moment, the arrogance and the idiocy of the European imperialists depicted within this book are all that much more maddening. Anderson does provide a very compelling portrait of T. E. Lawrence.</p><p>2024-02-11</p><p>I read Michael Kupperman's graphic memoir <i><a href="https://www.tcj.com/reviews/all-the-answers/?fbclid=IwAR08IbrH20xPk4mZqxBbybmV23eBMKLK7P8qbSgPRObUakjAXJRW2yxG4bo" target="_blank">All The Answers</a></i>. The title is very clever. Because (as the review states) M. Kupperman's father had been a child prodigy on 1940's radio quiz shows. He knew all the answers. The guy who designed those quiz shows went on to design the 1950's television quiz shows like "The $64,000 Question" which later turned out to have been rigged, with popular contestants having "all the answers." But his father's childhood experiences marked him forever and therefore impacted the author's life and he finally wants to sit down and discuss this verboten topic with his father to get "all the answers."</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjggQaTqj_swaxCh0A8Az1IzjOIk2zTMOr7nUwPljQfuwd-uK4D6Qc-lKMdgWaDj4zDwcQxXLXwPZnBoUD5R0J7i4HPYDfsm4x8ZqSBDvu8TdfziFUN-v8BEkDFCwyfIW2N4XTD9snqjWlemUZpDaLqtJBfvmF2dMeLjFexH3c9xUvjS-1cka9ls0AHJ3Wc/s1159/xomic.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1159" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjggQaTqj_swaxCh0A8Az1IzjOIk2zTMOr7nUwPljQfuwd-uK4D6Qc-lKMdgWaDj4zDwcQxXLXwPZnBoUD5R0J7i4HPYDfsm4x8ZqSBDvu8TdfziFUN-v8BEkDFCwyfIW2N4XTD9snqjWlemUZpDaLqtJBfvmF2dMeLjFexH3c9xUvjS-1cka9ls0AHJ3Wc/s320/xomic.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><br /><p>From the review:</p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-small;"><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #010101; line-height: inherit;"></em></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-small;"><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #010101; line-height: inherit;">All the Answers</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #010101;"> documents Michael Kupperman’s efforts to learn more about the years his father, Joel Kupperman, spent as a child performer on </span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #010101; line-height: inherit;">Quiz Kids</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #010101;">, first a radio game show and later an early television program. Throughout the book, he contends with both the hastening of his father’s dementia and a reticence about </span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #010101; line-height: inherit;">Quiz Kids </em><span style="background-color: white; color: #010101;">that predates that diagnosis. The program had been a "forbidden subject” during Kupperman’s own childhood, and he devotes much of </span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #010101; line-height: inherit;">All the Answers</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #010101;"> to exploring how the experience might have damaged his father. This means also turning toward a curious intersection in US history.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #010101;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-small;">...</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #010101; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-small;">In its gravity, scope, and personal focus, <em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;">All the Answers</em> marks a major departure for Kupperman, best known for absurdist humor comics such as <em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Tales Designed to Thrizzle</em>. And yet fans of those comics may still find much to like in <em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Answers</em>. Kupperman arrives at a variety of surreal images, such as a row of <em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Quiz Kids</em> participants in graduation gowns, waiting to be heard across the nation. The strangeness of Joel Kupperman’s youth often defies belief; he meets Orson Welles at one point and has no patience for Welles’s magic tricks. Kupperman’s talent for the bizarre is especially useful during a sequence in which a ghoulish Henry Ford—“trying to repair his image by reversing his stance on Jews”—stops by a hotel room Joel is occupying with his parents, keen to speak with the boy.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #010101; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-small;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Answers</em> includes a more limited selection of formal flourishes than a reader would find in a <em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Thrizzle</em> collection. This is a more restrained Michael Kupperman. </span></p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #010101; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-small;"></span></p><p>Glad I got it out from the library.</p><p>2024-02-20</p><p>I finished Tim Cook's second volume of his history of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in World War I: <i><a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/3449/reviews/27351/dimmel-cook-shock-troops-canadians-fighting-great-war-1917-1918" target="_blank">Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917-1918</a></i> last night.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6H24kAnpG8M9c8znE3nyORnaesW9ooZJxpnue3nPhSRuhQVdYUsKG0wdIEaYGD3vhWuTp8PLVqJcwH5EbykLYAEYLaZtlIGkg4zsM6qT26oFWLJbgSyx2fBkcBU5235X4vFfHacou4HlDf8hIxLRIT4ziduUPezlmVbpYiuU-5ELjnJZSpJRZu0iSnf0r/s746/urok.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="746" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6H24kAnpG8M9c8znE3nyORnaesW9ooZJxpnue3nPhSRuhQVdYUsKG0wdIEaYGD3vhWuTp8PLVqJcwH5EbykLYAEYLaZtlIGkg4zsM6qT26oFWLJbgSyx2fBkcBU5235X4vFfHacou4HlDf8hIxLRIT4ziduUPezlmVbpYiuU-5ELjnJZSpJRZu0iSnf0r/s320/urok.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>I read his first volume: <i><a href="https://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.com/2017/11/at-sharp-end-by-tim-cook.html" target="_blank">At the Sharp End</a></i> a few year's ago.</p><p>The linked review provides lots of stuff to summarize the book. I'll add that there are interesting anecdotes such as the troops believing there were deserters from both sides living as ghouls in No Man's Land between the trenches, living by coming out of their holes at night and eating fresh corpses. The biggest takeaway for me was the insane waste of soldiers' lives (especially effective veterans) in the "Hundred Days." In my innocence I thought that the biggest casualties were taken earlier in the war and that all the training of the Canadians and the depletion of the Germans had made the casualties of the CEF in the last months of the war relatively light. Instead, it seems that instead of having really absorbed the lessons of the war, the generals (especially the French generals such as Allied Supreme Commander Ferdinand Foche) were still wedded to the "hit them hard, hit them everywhere and wear them down [and ignore the toll it's taking on us]" that had inspired the Somme and the Nievelle and Passaschendele offenses. You see, the Germans had spent their last bolt in their 1918 offensive and Canadian Commander Arthur Currie's initial counteroffensive was done according to his own timetable, despite the protestations of his superior Douglas Haig. And it was a great success. But after that, Currie either succumbed to, or agreed with the orders of his superiors to keep on attacking, again and again, and Canadians died in the thousands running up against still effective German defenses, without artillery support, without proper reconaissance, with nothing, basically, but the hard-won offensive skills of infantrymen who were being constantly sacrificed.</p><p>Would the war have been prolonged into 1919 if Currie had been given or taken a few more days here and there to plan his offensives? </p><p>The story of the soldier saved by a dream of his brother. The sections on how information was better shared within the smaller, less conservative CEF than in the British Army, the sections on the occupation of Germany and then the demobilization, when pent-up anger and frustration occasionally went past the boiling-point; and the sections on the postwar experiences of the veterans and the war's impact on Canada were quite well done. </p><p>2024-03-06</p><p>I finished Christopher McDougall's <i><a href="https://accidentallyinspired.com/2016/04/19/terrible-reviews-born-to-run/" target="_blank">Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen</a></i> a couple of nights ago.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgch3MAGIMy67koxDZyp8N0jo-Orux203hlY-Be2993yshVt8xU75F5kx0dlUOD0kvFhUkMFnnk1TR4tD-vnY3qKakak9lFUwIvujCFijxUqzeUIo7FRKwIZ_MTjlDerTFlBTlO0p_4ec1ycigYVWpX4VSUHC-C-6RYXwmKNrocAwN8u33C8IcwaRlTTMUy/s300/qar1.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="195" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgch3MAGIMy67koxDZyp8N0jo-Orux203hlY-Be2993yshVt8xU75F5kx0dlUOD0kvFhUkMFnnk1TR4tD-vnY3qKakak9lFUwIvujCFijxUqzeUIo7FRKwIZ_MTjlDerTFlBTlO0p_4ec1ycigYVWpX4VSUHC-C-6RYXwmKNrocAwN8u33C8IcwaRlTTMUy/s1600/qar1.webp" width="195" /></a></div><br /><p>It's from 2009. (I think.) I first heard about it when randomly flipping with the remote and coming across McDougall being interviewed on "The Daily Show" by Jon Stewart. It sounded fascinating. I actually kept it in mind for years, but never got around to reading it until someone left a copy in one of those little libraries where people put books they're finished with.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 1.6em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 1.6em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">McDougall covers a heck of a lot of ground, and the book would seem scattershot if not for the throughline of McDougall’s fascination and interaction with Caballo Blanco (White Horse), the near-mythical figure at the heart of the story. Caballo is alternately venerated and vilified in the book; on the one hand, he’s a gringo on a quest for self-discovery like so many runners, on the other, he’s a grouchy, flaky, off-putting sort. He’s weird, but he works, because he feels like fiction, even though he isn’t. <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Too strange to make up</em> sums him up nicely.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 1.6em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What also works for the book is its grounding in a couple of places: specifically the Leadville 100 Race and the underground race that takes place in the Copper Canyons. Multiple chapters are given over to these two races, which gives the reader a sense of the sprawling nature of distance running and the time and introspection that such an endeavor invites.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 1.6em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the two chapters that keep me coming back to the book the most (and which have <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">nothing</em> to do with its narrative … more on that later): the chapters on the history — and indictment, really — of running shoes and on biomechanical evolution (chapters 25 and 28, respectively). These two chapters have done more to change the way I think about running as a whole and <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the way </em>I run than a couple of years’ subscription to <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Runner’s World</em> magazine and endless hours trawling running and exercise forums. In short: the human body evolved as a paragon of distance-running, and it didn’t evolve that way with $200 motion-controlled shoes on its feet.</p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 1.6em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><p><a href="https://www.downthetrail.com/book-reviews/mcdougalls-born-to-run-book-review/" target="_blank">Here's another reviewer</a>:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; margin: 0px 0px 30px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; margin: 0px 0px 30px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Beginning with Caballo Blanco, an elusive runner who lives as a loner among the Tarahumara in Mexico’s Copper Canyons, a rush of eccentric characters runs through the book’s pages. We’re introduced to Ann Trason, ultra-running prodigy of the 80s and 90s. She’s pitted to race against Tarahumara men who wear little more than colorful robes and sandals for a high elevation, 100-mile run, day and night through the Colorado Rockies.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; margin: 0px 0px 30px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">That’s just an introduction. Next we’re told about Emil Zatopek, a Forrest Gump-esque Olympic prodigy of the 1950s from Czechoslovakia. Soon we’re on to Scott Jurek, arguably the sport’s biggest star, as he collapses in Death Valley on yet another sadistic race.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; margin: 0px 0px 30px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">From there we go to the east coast, where a young couple runs together at Virginia Beach to the rhythm of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” tearing up ultra events throughout the Appalachians.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; margin: 0px 0px 30px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Eventually McDougall gets back around to the question of “Why does my foot hurt?”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; margin: 0px 0px 30px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The answer, as you might guess by this point in the story, is because of the modern running shoe industry. He argues that the human body is designed to run for long distances without all that cushioning and arch support, and that such “protective” shoes are the reason behind such a high incidence of running injuries.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; margin: 0px 0px 30px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">He takes it a step further, sharing a theory about human evolution. To sum it up, some think that distance running played a role in homo-sapiens becoming the dominant species on earth. Despite our smaller brains and less-impressive physical stats compared to neanderthals, homo-sapiens possessed an Achilles tendon and other evolutionary features that led to greater endurance.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; margin: 0px 0px 30px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Our aerobic capacity allowed us to hunt in packs and literally run our prey to exhaustion, supplying a steady diet of meat that grew our brains and helped us thrive as a species. You could say that evolution has made humans born to run, thus the title. McDougall makes a compelling argument, with scientific data to back it up.</span></p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; margin: 0px 0px 30px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><p>Both of those reviews say what I was going to say. It's a page-turner. I felt somewhat lost from time to time, as McDougall jumps around and keeps introducing new characters. But not as bad as the first reviewer evidently did. And the order of the stories makes sense. Especially after you've completed it. </p><p>The first review ends with high praise that I (who am not a runner, I find it boring and my right knee is fucked) agree with:</p><p><span face="Ubuntu, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-size: 16px;"></span></p><blockquote><span face="Ubuntu, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-size: 16px;">Warts notwithstanding, </span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Born to Run</em><span face="Ubuntu, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-size: 16px;">, I think, takes the flying leap from being a good book </span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">about running</em><span face="Ubuntu, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-size: 16px;"> to being a </span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">good book</em><span face="Ubuntu, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-size: 16px;">. </span><span face="Ubuntu, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #5e5e5e; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you’re going to read a book about running, this is the one to read.</span></blockquote><span face="Ubuntu, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #5e5e5e; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><p></p><p>And yesterday I finished Stephen F. Cohen's <i><a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/war-with-russia-by-stephen-cohen-review-a-stern-warning-1.3738513" target="_blank">War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate</a>.</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNTPHIpWdsa4vqsQDO1u_rbPA_OqOo_B6XPSiksFRMmCbSXbNc4mEPDQ_ZmmxpYPLmGGN6jcItHeXhyb3KNfz9u7lqqoCb3Nxmmy5mnY_lTRDSe_h6-0s-dqewvKUNAwJaHwsVqoR7yKvohfOY6HbEQIO67bhS-IRxsH_C_y6RqBDfiMcrrjzQufqapz_P/s685/qar2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="685" data-original-width="501" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNTPHIpWdsa4vqsQDO1u_rbPA_OqOo_B6XPSiksFRMmCbSXbNc4mEPDQ_ZmmxpYPLmGGN6jcItHeXhyb3KNfz9u7lqqoCb3Nxmmy5mnY_lTRDSe_h6-0s-dqewvKUNAwJaHwsVqoR7yKvohfOY6HbEQIO67bhS-IRxsH_C_y6RqBDfiMcrrjzQufqapz_P/s320/qar2.jpg" width="234" /></a></div><br /><i><br /></i><p></p><p>It's kind of depressing, reading it 2024, as Cohen describes the lying, the delusion, the stupidity of the neocon's actions against Russia since 2014, and knowing how things only got worse since the book's appearance in 2019 and Cohen's death in 2020.</p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #191919; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"></span></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #191919; letter-spacing: -0.2px;">This book is based on a series of weekly radio broadcasts made by Cohen under the rubric </span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #191919; letter-spacing: -0.2px;">The New US-Russian Cold War</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #191919; letter-spacing: -0.2px;">. The broadcasts began in 2014 but Cohen had long argued that a new cold war was unfolding in American-Russian relations.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #191919; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">There is an urgency and anxiety running through Cohen’s commentaries because he sees the new cold war as much more dangerous than its predecessor. Russiagate has been accompanied by a pernicious Russophobia that demonises not just Putin but the Russian people. The resultant hysteria has been ramped up by US media, by grandstanding politicians, and by blatantly self-serving military and industrial interests. American elites seem to have lost their fear of atomic warfare, while there is little or no mainstream political opposition to current hawkish policies aimed at Russia. As Cohen points out, even at the height of the Soviet-American cold war – an existential struggle between capitalism and communism – there were many mainstream advocates of détente with the USSR. During the old cold war the communist bloc acted as a buffer between the two sides. The new cold war is being fought directly along Russia’s borders, most dangerously in a proxy civil war being battled out in Ukraine.</span></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #191919; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span></span></p><p>One response that I had was when Cohen continually mentioned how Putin was trying to help the USA to combat Islamic terrorism and that Washington's blinkered Russophobia was throwing away a valuable partnership. It is now clear to me that the Washington foreign-policy psychopaths don't give a shit about terrorism. Otherwise they wouldn't do so much to actually fund and arm and generally support them. It's all about the chaos.</p><p>2024 -03-09</p><p>Yesterday I finished Samantha M Bailey's <i><a href="https://ivereadthis.com/2020/04/18/book-review-woman-on-the-edge-by-samantha-m-bailey/" target="_blank">Woman on the Edge</a></i>. This turned out to be a bigger departure for me than I'd planned. A scan of my blog posts about my reading will reveal that I am not a big fiction reader. I've recently tried to rectify this because there are classic works of fiction out there that speak to the realities of their time and place as well as the timelessness of the human condition. And, as well, I know that there are current authors writing brilliant works, some still under the radar, who I would like to discover.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilmvdbLgup9WqcuoXbzGnkziSCvev5vi2H1HLpkLSPHDypo7ASLz09ZFa0CcGvTBH90XAoMxkwy7PBF76-42Mm01TOomapMVHAaUGznIKREkLCKd2SPxu-lhwsBb_X0QFcpYFM6CWQYZ_2E4b8fpm3p4n0ym7kK8b1uLUhqayuFSePxYdxBs7oNtAaahTV/s350/yedged.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="228" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilmvdbLgup9WqcuoXbzGnkziSCvev5vi2H1HLpkLSPHDypo7ASLz09ZFa0CcGvTBH90XAoMxkwy7PBF76-42Mm01TOomapMVHAaUGznIKREkLCKd2SPxu-lhwsBb_X0QFcpYFM6CWQYZ_2E4b8fpm3p4n0ym7kK8b1uLUhqayuFSePxYdxBs7oNtAaahTV/s320/yedged.jpg" width="208" /></a></div><br /><p>With that in mind I googled something like "Best Canadian Thrillers 2000's" and found a link with the "10 Best Canadian Mystery & Thriller Writers." <i>Woman on the Edge</i> was the first one and the fact that it had a female author appealed to me as I want to read more works by women. It was about something that happens at a subway station so I thought it would be set in Toronto.</p><p>The first few pages were dedicated to glowing reviews. I didn't want to risk any spoilers so I skipped them and started reading. I'd gotten it as an ebook from the library and, as such, I had no real indication of how long it would be. It turned out to be a short book. More plot than characterization as the review linked to above says. There's two women, one a new mother and one a lonely young widow, and the new mother has some dark secrets in her past that, combined with post-partum depression, turn her into a basket-case emotionally. She's being targeted by persons unknown who start to really turn the screws that send her over the edge. (That ain't no spoiler. It happens in the first chapter and is hinted to on the cover.) </p><p>The lonely young widow has her own skeletons in her closet and she gets wrapped up in the other woman's life and can't figure out why. I have to say that I found it irritating how, even before the pressure is really applied, the first woman can't confide in her husband AT ALL. She supposedly loves the guy but not only will she not tell him why she's acting so strangely (the stuff from her past more than the post-partum bizness) but she rejects any and all offers from him to help her. Like, if I was him, it would have gone WAY beyond a new mother overwhelmed by her hormones and the huge change in her life. I would have been thinking of getting the fuck out of there myself.</p><p>Meanwhile, while the new mother is refusing to talk to anyone but her P.A., the widow can't stop going after people to find out what's going on. Even when her lawyer is begging her to just stay put and not give the police any more reasons to suspect her of anything. </p><p>After I finished it I went to read all the glowing reviews and it turns out they're all from other women authors of similar books who probably do these things with their publishers as a form of mutual aid.</p><p>2023-03-11</p><p>Last night I finished Graham Robb's <i><a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/victor-hugo-graham-robb/book/9780330371452.html" target="_blank">Victor Hugo: A Biography</a></i>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeb0FAiAohK6628JIv0OK3Pek_s5ApPfk-I4SYVa48TkTxhUuALy0rTpMNQsN4FwwCUpOxW6GZZ1r_L3A6CkUjcCe7rHsio4j87qI-4VowpLnoddYBYHsBbslx5_Fv82CJcbAhOlPzomqn2hziTD1Pe1jEXjy09CEppexbhQtjKxv_33PL4UUmpuOcv8au/s349/VicHug.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="349" data-original-width="234" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeb0FAiAohK6628JIv0OK3Pek_s5ApPfk-I4SYVa48TkTxhUuALy0rTpMNQsN4FwwCUpOxW6GZZ1r_L3A6CkUjcCe7rHsio4j87qI-4VowpLnoddYBYHsBbslx5_Fv82CJcbAhOlPzomqn2hziTD1Pe1jEXjy09CEppexbhQtjKxv_33PL4UUmpuOcv8au/s320/VicHug.jpeg" width="215" /></a></div><p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87)" style="background-color: white; font-family: __Inter_a7cd27, __Inter_Fallback_a7cd27; font-size: 15.4px;"></span></p><blockquote>'One of the best biographies I have read, ever' Selina Hastings 'Mr Robb has written an enthralling book -- one of the great biographies of our time. He contrives not to be dwarfed by his subject, which is some contrivance. He makes of Hugo's life a story as exciting to read as it was extraordinary to have lived. He has a matchless gift for narrative. His style is epigrammatic and compelling. His judgements seem fair -- not something Hugo was used to in life. Every Place Victor Hugo should now have a Cafe-Bar Graham Robb. He deserves, and will probably get, the Legion d'honneur' Allan Massie, Daily Telegraph 'Robb achieves the goal of all good literary biographies by making us long to regain, or savour for the first time, Hugo's company as a writer. Surely no chronicler of his life or analyst of his work has ever looked this prodigy of nature so unflinchingly in the eye' Jonathan Keates, Literary Review 'Graham Robb's exuberant biography of the French writer blows the cobwebs away from a neglected hero and sets him before us in lurid and quite unforgettable shape. Robb's jaunty, self-confident style is gloriously appropriate to his subject ...Robb's enthusiasm is hugely exhilarating and his biography is a fascinating study in the making of a celebrity' Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times, Books of the Year 'The best life of the writer available in English (and likely to remain so for some time) . ..His fascinating, totally readable Life will introduce Hugo to many readers who know him only as a name' Robin Buss, Independent on Sunday</blockquote><p></p><p>As I understand it, Robb says that most Hugo biographies (whether French or English or whatever) are either hagiographies or hatchet-jobs. Robb claims that his biography of Hugo is going to be objective and based on a wider reading of sources, both of Hugo's contempories and Hugo's own writings and personal papers.<br /><br />I saw this book and I figured that I'd known about his name and the titles of some of his works for almost my entire life, even though I'd never read anything by him (a very common thing in the English-speaking world) and what I did know was that he was a hero of the French Left and, as an old man, he remained something of a satyr.</p><p>This biography is nicely written. Robb has his own voice and his own sense of humour. It is effortlessly interesting because Hugo's life was inherently interesting. (For instance, at one point in his childhood he live in a palace in Spain because his father was a Napoleonic general engaged in the sort of activities depicted by Goya in his "Horrors of War" series.)</p><p>Hugo's reputation as a socialist is remarkable considering his neutral opinion on the 1830 Revolution, his violent opposition to the 1848 Revolution, his penchant for sex (occasionally paid) with female servants and other working class women and, lastly, his great wealth.</p><p>With regards to the sex part, in 1870, when Hugo returned to France from nineteen years of exile at the age of 68, women lined up on his stairwell to have sex with him. I was particularly surprised (and somewhat delighted) to read that the courageous revolutionary <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Michel" target="_blank">Louise Michel</a> was one of them. [It turns out from that Wikipedia page that they'd been corresponding through letters for five years by that point. I'd read that page before, but hadn't processed that factoid.]</p><p>2024-03-16</p><p>I read David Eagleman's <i><a href="https://www.anuradhasridharan.com/2022/01/book-review-the-brain-story-of-you-david-eagleman.html" target="_blank">The Brain: The Story of You</a></i> from 2015.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKy_H4ZsvZtTlRiqspgGbVQPDhvX7e6Dy-9FakNvJgCM8s3tpplwrMczdjPHz5XBdMNzqIZwIGrYhb5YV_rwgHZjkVzVcHdC3HoMR41oZI3UX8VnKC5tDQl-VbBpPi0nh8YtBdxUHO4iKocxwYd92W2zVmenR7tARxuxgjwJKv6zztO9m1xpbftP1Pry42/s400/weagleman.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="261" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKy_H4ZsvZtTlRiqspgGbVQPDhvX7e6Dy-9FakNvJgCM8s3tpplwrMczdjPHz5XBdMNzqIZwIGrYhb5YV_rwgHZjkVzVcHdC3HoMR41oZI3UX8VnKC5tDQl-VbBpPi0nh8YtBdxUHO4iKocxwYd92W2zVmenR7tARxuxgjwJKv6zztO9m1xpbftP1Pry42/s320/weagleman.png" width="209" /></a></div><br /><p>It was about 220 pages of fairly large font but it had a lot of cool stuff in it. I'd seen the bit of the BBC documentary about the teenaged brain being very insecure about its developing personality. Agonizing about fitting in socially and an undeveloped part of the brain that evaluates risk makes for a risky time of life.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C8k-lrJrldw" width="320" youtube-src-id="C8k-lrJrldw"></iframe></div><br /><p>His depiction of the world outside our senses was one of the clearest expressions of what I'd refer to as Schopenhauer's "Will." According to Eagleman it is silent, dark, odourless. It is just energy. Light photons bouncing off of objects, atoms within molecules moving around environments of other molecules. None of it having any impact except when it impacts on the senses of biological creatures and those senses are sent (in our case and in some other life forms) to these brains, encased in the darks of our skulls.</p><p>He says a lot of fascinating things. As a leftist I got a little irked how he used the 2008 financial crisis as an illustration of how people tend to value immediate goals over future benefits. Most of the people who signed those garbage mortgages were lied to. But he does mention how the financial sector was also guilty of thinking short-term. (Unless they were sure they'd get bailed-out by the taxpayers.) And the weakest part of the book was the part about transhumanism.</p><p>But the parts about synesthesia, schizophrenia, how time doesn't really slow down like it sometimes seems to do in a crisis, and about how much calculation and unconscious activity is going on to allow us to not only play chess, but to move the pieces, adjust our position, walk without thinking about it, and so-on and such-forth, ... really cool.</p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-42370229953262990442024-01-16T13:20:00.004-05:002024-01-18T06:09:34.388-05:00Kursk<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMupTiFYtqnXgjDGgBkh3xl2DrdvTBatBluG-2oWcf85CrgiQplp8kOh6jsT4yZ6dojIDUmavnWjO_IRQNJXw0BrBV4oVIFLLkzfZreW5rSDogDDCYfshvvWvsEogEtgWkpL5fEJgStOtWBz2ptvMt9O60cUo_SRACEP5KjJwhH3iV_WNzs-IRta9LAqFp/s1566/ursk1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="880" data-original-width="1566" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMupTiFYtqnXgjDGgBkh3xl2DrdvTBatBluG-2oWcf85CrgiQplp8kOh6jsT4yZ6dojIDUmavnWjO_IRQNJXw0BrBV4oVIFLLkzfZreW5rSDogDDCYfshvvWvsEogEtgWkpL5fEJgStOtWBz2ptvMt9O60cUo_SRACEP5KjJwhH3iV_WNzs-IRta9LAqFp/s320/ursk1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>It is January, 2024. I am, in all seriousness, predicting that the Russia-Ukraine War (aka: Russia's "Special Military Operation") will continue for one more "<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=friedman%20unit" target="_blank">Friedman Unit</a>." [A "Friedman Unit" is named after airhead Zionist-imperialist Thomas Friedman who wrote propaganda for the <i><a href="https://delong.typepad.com/egregious_moderation/2009/01/matt-taibbi-flathead-the-peculiar-genius-of-thomas-l-friedman.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a></i>. Whenever he was asked for his opinion on that catastrophe, he would invariably pull the words "the next six months" out of his stinking anus, and say that something vague, but good, would happen at the end of that period of time.]<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>In the sidebar on YouTube I've been seeing a thumbnail for somebody's video about the Battle of Kursk. That 1943 battle was Germany's third, and final, offensive against the Soviets. Germany did not eliminate the Kursk salient and from then on was on the defensive until its final defeat in 1945.</p><p>Last summer, the Ukraine launched a much ballyhooed summer offensive against Russian lines. They failed to even reach (let alone breach) the Russian's first defensive line. Ukrainian casualties in that offensive might be as high as 50,000 killed. These included the best trained soldiers who had been given the best fighting vehicles that Ukraine had received from NATO. All of these were lost.</p><p>I'm giving Ukraine six more months when Germany lasted two years following the defeat at Kursk. This is based on my fairly ignorant understanding of the comparable industrial, political, economic and military strength of Ukraine in the 2020's and Germany in the 1940's. It seems to me that Germany still had a first-rate industrial base which, with the rationalization of production achieved by Albert Speer, actually greatly increased its productivity. The Nazi Party had had over a decade to establish itself at all levels of German society, so as to coerce people into serving it. On top of that, Hitler's unorthodox economic policy had dragged Germany out of a severe depression in the 1930's and many Germans were still loyal to his government for that reason.</p><p>Ukraine was an impoverished state with a terrible corruption problem for decades before the Russian invasion. Its industrial base was decrepit. Now it's destroyed. It has been receiving equipment from NATO countries, primarily the USA, but also the UK, Germany and France. (This is after the Ukraine went through the remnants of Warsaw Pact-era weaponry from NATO's Eastern European members.) During the last half-century of peace (with the occasional smashing of Third World militaries such as Iraq's or Libya's) US-American weapons manufacturers have developed a talent for producing expensive, overly-complicated machinery requiring extensive, costly maintenance and upgrades. They're more concerned with profitability over efficiency. Germany had a shrinking, but still top-of-the-line airforce. Ukraine has almost nothing. Germany had excellent anti-aircraft capabilities. Ukraine's is borrowed and it's being depleted. The Ukrainian people elected Zelensky as a peace candidate. They didn't get peace. The US-installed Ukrainian fascists demanded war with Russia. Our media-propaganda system writes a lot of hogwash about Ukrainian patriotism (as well as Russians' hatred of Putin and the war). But millions of Ukrainians fled when the Russians invaded. Millions more tried every means they could think of to avoid fighting and most of those who have fought and died in this war were dragooned. Ukraine was found to be drafting men in their forties and fifties even before this failed summer offensive.</p><p>I don't think that Ukraine in January 2024 has anything near the resources that Germany had in August, 1943. I give them another six months before the current government of Ukraine collapses and is replaced by one more acceptable to Putin's Russia.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/etIL-f8NfIc" width="320" youtube-src-id="etIL-f8NfIc"></iframe></div><br /><p><br /></p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-25282675639429373802024-01-14T13:54:00.006-05:002024-01-16T05:25:02.554-05:00Genocide is as bad as it gets (Jan. 16th completed)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivKI7psohPc5KmFP2nm3KrbjRoaaiwnnD8d3d6IKbjL6aE5dUZ-ijptaalsU5DDZUc0kYMAZp4AUK3giyeOmqKF0gCl_pDCkyTm7Tt22BGoJkCCEoGgVqVNCSiaqHn9TP_cgncgUC3nLCO_E7Z-61QTzcB2dcNrDez-tihkPb4HnwWS1hpIfMjsoB2nzJP/s1480/vun1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="833" data-original-width="1480" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivKI7psohPc5KmFP2nm3KrbjRoaaiwnnD8d3d6IKbjL6aE5dUZ-ijptaalsU5DDZUc0kYMAZp4AUK3giyeOmqKF0gCl_pDCkyTm7Tt22BGoJkCCEoGgVqVNCSiaqHn9TP_cgncgUC3nLCO_E7Z-61QTzcB2dcNrDez-tihkPb4HnwWS1hpIfMjsoB2nzJP/s320/vun1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Years and years ago I heard about a book with the title <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_People_is_Wrong" target="_blank">Eating People is Wrong</a></i>. I got the book from somewhere and started it but the way the white, male, British author used some international student from Africa as a figure of fun soon gave me a bad taste in my mouth and I quickly stopped reading. I mention it here because the title seemed to be this proud assertion of the obvious attempting to combat an age of moral relativism. </p><p>Some would argue it's not as simple as that. They would say that settler families trapped in the Sierra-Nevada mountains, or a soccer team on a plane that crash-landed in the Andes were only doing what they had to, to survive, when they ate the bodies of those who were already dead. Relatedly, through online dating, I met a mousy woman (small, plain, quiet, nervous) who somehow felt compelled to tell me four times during our short acquaintance that she would have no problem resorting to cannibalism in such situations. We met late on a Saturday afternoon after she'd insisted we could still meet even though she'd been up all night with her suicidal gay friend at CAMH emergency after having spent the day looking after her dying father. I thought it best to call it an evening when she finished her glass of cola as she looked and sounded exhausted. That seemed to piss her off and she was quietly hostile to me on the streetcar trip to Yonge Street.</p><p>A scene from my life. I think that was at least five years ago. I'm fifty-seven. Thousands upon thousands of Palestinian children will have no future, no more scenes from their lives to look back on, no ability to look back upon anything, as they were murdered by Israeli bombs. And tens of thousands more will die from starvation and disease, deliberately inflicted upon them by the nazi-brained zionist scum in the Netanyahu coalition of corrupt, murderous racists. This includes the racist, apartheid-enforcing Israeli Defence Force of cowards and bullies. And how many tens of thousands of Palestinian children might survive this nightmare with their bodies whole but their minds traumatized by the murders of their parents, their brothers and sisters, their friends, their communities, at the hands of the Israelis? GENOCIDE IS WRONG. GENOCIDE IS AS BAD AS IT GETS. And every single Canadian shit-head from Justin Trudeau, to Pierre Poilievre to Cathie From Canada, who tries to deny this simple fact has lowered themselves beyond redemption.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>As the South African legal team presented in their case against Israel's genocide in Gaza, Netanyahu and his ministers have openly declared that they are engaging in collective punishment of the people of Gaza for the actions of Hamas. They have openly declared that they intend to make Gaza unliveable for Palestinians. They have openly declared their intention to expel the Palestinians and to take the land for themselves. We have seen the saturation bombing of civilian infrastructure including the deliberate targeting of hospitals. </p><p>In response, the Israeli shit-heads have nothing but stupid, irrelevant talk about "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel" target="_blank">blood libel</a>," along with obvious lies about how they're not dropping the bombs they're dropping and they're not assasinating the civilians they're assassinating, plus statements made by the IDF and the Netanyahu government about minimizing civilian casualties that were only ever made to be used as a legal cover: "Look! In early November I said we had to get food and water to the Palestinians ASAP. The fact that I've actually been blocking their getting food and water should be disregarded." </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8mZ46bRW1g7SRc31XVRof4mdQtrn_La10t66apg8l5KiRExeYx3pD4pJ-Pi5bknDOHECRVUZfVai4F39keIe-bpGv4YoQsmmVuJ_j8SpeyCYu___-YT8ONyArMLuNWfTUqclHjSNFIMRUmSmvhKOCKZrSjU_EDNQIHVNO9tTsNRinZW-uWrGvM5E4U78I/s897/yun2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="569" data-original-width="897" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8mZ46bRW1g7SRc31XVRof4mdQtrn_La10t66apg8l5KiRExeYx3pD4pJ-Pi5bknDOHECRVUZfVai4F39keIe-bpGv4YoQsmmVuJ_j8SpeyCYu___-YT8ONyArMLuNWfTUqclHjSNFIMRUmSmvhKOCKZrSjU_EDNQIHVNO9tTsNRinZW-uWrGvM5E4U78I/s320/yun2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>"Blood libel" is a step below the canard that criticizing the actions of the state of Israel is "antisemitic." </p><p style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em;"><b></b></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em;"><b>Blood libel</b> or <b>ritual murder libel</b> (also <b>blood accusation</b>)<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-JewishEncyclopedia_1-0" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel#cite_note-JewishEncyclopedia-1" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[1]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-dundes_2-0" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel#cite_note-dundes-2" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[2]</a></sup> is an <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitic_canard" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Antisemitic canard">antisemitic canard</a><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Turvey2008p3_3-0" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel#cite_note-Turvey2008p3-3" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[3]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Chanes2004pp34-35_4-0" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel#cite_note-Chanes2004pp34-35-4" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[4]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Goldish2008p8_5-0" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel#cite_note-Goldish2008p8-5" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[5]</a></sup> which falsely accuses Jews of murdering Christians in order to use their blood in the performance of <a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_ritual" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Religious ritual">religious rituals</a>.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-JewishEncyclopedia_1-1" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel#cite_note-JewishEncyclopedia-1" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[1]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-dundes_2-1" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel#cite_note-dundes-2" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[2]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-zeitlin_6-0" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel#cite_note-zeitlin-6" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[6]</a></sup> Echoing very old myths of secret <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sacrifice" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Child sacrifice">cultic practices</a> in many <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Prehistory">prehistoric</a> societies, the claim, as it is leveled against Jews, was rarely attested to in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_history" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Ancient history">antiquity</a>. According to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertullian" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Tertullian">Tertullian</a>, it originally emerged in late antiquity as an accusation made against <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Early Christianity">members of the early Christian community</a> of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Roman Empire">Roman Empire</a>.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-D'Antonio_7-0" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel#cite_note-D'Antonio-7" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[7]</a></sup> Once this accusation had been dismissed, it was revived a millennium later as a Christian slander against Jews in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Middle Ages">medieval period</a>.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-8" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel#cite_note-8" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[8]</a></sup><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-9" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel#cite_note-9" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[9]</a></sup> This libel, alongside those of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_poisoning" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Well poisoning">well poisoning</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_desecration" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Host desecration">host desecration</a>, became a major theme of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Europe" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="History of the Jews in Europe">persecution of Jews in Europe</a> from that period down to modern times.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Chanes2004pp34-35_4-1" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel#cite_note-Chanes2004pp34-35-4" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[4]</a></sup></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em;">Blood libels often claim that Jews require human blood for the baking of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matzah" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Matzah">matzos</a>, an unleavened flatbread which is eaten during <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Passover">Passover</a>. Earlier versions of the blood libel accused Jews of ritually re-enacting the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_of_Jesus" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Crucifixion of Jesus">crucifixion</a>.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-10" style="font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; text-wrap: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel#cite_note-10" style="background: none; color: #3366cc; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">[10]</a></sup> The accusations often assert that the blood of Christian children is especially coveted, and historically, blood libel claims have been made in order to account for the otherwise unexplained deaths of children.</p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0.5em 0px 1em;"></p><p>You'd have to be either a complete idiot or a shameless cynic or both, to attempt to say that accusing Israel of mass-murder of Palestinians (after having watched footage of the IDF bombing civilians and the Israeli government saying they're all being punished because they all support Hamas and there are no innocents in Gaza) is akin to wild accusations of drinking the blood of Christian babies during cultic celebrations in the Medieval forest.</p><p>Either an idiot, a cynical liar, or a psychopath. It is a fact that Netanyahu is facing major corruption charges should he ever lose power. To avoid this he has allied with the most extremist, nauseatingly racist Israeli nazis in a coalition by pandering to their maximum-expansionist colonial project regardless of the consequences for peace or for Israel's international reputation. </p><p>Things were still dicey for Netanyahu and many are also saying that he's been temporarily rescued from his legal troubles by this political-military crisis in Gaza. There's also good reason to believe that Netanyahu allowed the Hamas attack to happen so as to allow this crisis and save his skin. As I've said before, I don't tend to subscribe to false-flag theories and conspiracies. But this time I'm on the fence. One of the reasons I tend not to believe in such things is because of the impossibility of keeping the necessarily large group of individuals who orchestrated it to remain quiet. In the case of the Hamas attack on October 7th though, a number of authorities, both inside and outside of Israel, including the Egyptians and the United States, have said they tried to warn Netanyahu. You see? In this instance, the people who are supposed to have been blindsided have instead told us that Netanyahu didn't listen to their warnings.</p><p>This is what disgusts me. Netanyahu is 74-years old. He apparently thinks his own freedom to take his decrepit body wherever he wants it to go (and not have it confined to a prison) is so goddamned precious and important that he was willing to have hundreds of other Israelis and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians killed to preserve it.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEMaMLJwijEnSMEXTe8AjH0ZaxK8aV4XG3JXXsmRDTvfaLKDO86AEFQxMszRVS9TStkEEa5Tjpfg2ZBpeX6bzQ0U-8NVZKIITXHoa42OBivf9OCpBH4fZFX6-sbPCRQ7BHeqtbiQkS5ssyQBIwDZls8IGvjAsPemDtvpg9cp9ZywDY6JnphNrcBE6Xy9Zs/s800/vun2.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="549" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEMaMLJwijEnSMEXTe8AjH0ZaxK8aV4XG3JXXsmRDTvfaLKDO86AEFQxMszRVS9TStkEEa5Tjpfg2ZBpeX6bzQ0U-8NVZKIITXHoa42OBivf9OCpBH4fZFX6-sbPCRQ7BHeqtbiQkS5ssyQBIwDZls8IGvjAsPemDtvpg9cp9ZywDY6JnphNrcBE6Xy9Zs/s320/vun2.webp" width="220" /></a></div><br /><p>Genocide is the lowest that human beings can go. There are no nuances. There are no "extenuating circumstances" to explain the deliberate physical removal of a people from the earth. It is EVIL, if the word "evil" has any sort of meaning.</p><p>And that is why the Trudeau Liberals have utterly disgraced themselves with their stupid, mewling support for Israel against South Africa's case against Israel at the ICJ.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">The Liberal government has faced days of questions about where Canada stands on South Africa's case before the top United Nations court.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"Canada has long been a tremendous supporter of the international rules-based order and processes and structures that have been put in place over the past decades to be able to actually ensure that international law is respected and enforced," Trudeau told a press conference Friday in Guelph, Ont.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"And the ICJ, International Court of Justice, is a key part of that. Our wholehearted support of the ICJ and its processes does not mean we support the premise of the case brought forward by South Africa."</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">In a statement released Friday afternoon, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly echoed Trudeau's remarks and said Canada will watch the case before the ICJ very closely.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"Under the UN's 1948 Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide requires the intention to destroy or partly destroy a group because of their nationality, ethnicity, race or religion. Meeting this high threshold requires compelling evidence," said Joly.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"We must ensure that the procedural steps in this case are not used to foster antisemitism and targeting of Jewish neighbourhoods, businesses and individuals. At the same time, we will continue to stand against Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment."</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">In the statement, Joly went on to say that Canada remains deeply concerned about the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and supports urgent international efforts to secure a sustainable ceasefire.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"This cannot be one-sided. Hamas must release all hostages, stop using Palestinian civilians as human shields and lay down its arms," she said.</p><p>Let's discuss this stupidity: </p><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;"></span></p><blockquote><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">"Canada has long been a tremendous supporter of the international rules-based order and processes and structures that have been put in place over the past decades to be able to actually ensure that international law is respected and enforced," Trudeau told a press conference Friday in Guelph, Ont.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Trudeau fucked-up a little there. People noticed that the USA has recently stopped talking about "international law" since its serial violations of it in the 21st Century. Instead imperialist mouthpieces would talk about a nebulous "<a href="https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/01/16/the-rules-based-international-order/" target="_blank">rules-based international order</a>." By equating both of these ideas in the same sentence Trudeau shows that he doesn't understand what he's talking about.</p><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;"></span></p><blockquote><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">"And the ICJ, International Court of Justice, is a key part of that. Our wholehearted support of the ICJ and its processes does not mean we support the premise of the case brought forward by South Africa."</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Trudeau is making the meaningless comment that he supports a legal system but not all sides of all parties in that legal system. If somebody asked him if he thought that one person being sued by another person for slander was guilty, would Trudeau waste time by saying that he recognized the legitmacy of the court where the case was being heard before saying that he disagreed with the plaintiff's case? Methinks that Trudeau was just trying to obscure the central point of his disagreeing with South Africa. Because if he simply said that he disagreed with South Africa's argument that Israel is committing a genocide, he'd have to explain WHY he disagrees. And there's no good reason to disagree with South Africa's complaint because Israel's own defence against the charges was so ridiculous.</p><p>Trudeau's stupid yammering about how wonderful he is to accept the legitimacy of the ICJ is akin to a student who hasn't studied trying to pad their presentation with inanities like: "The question of how the Roman Empire got so big is an important one with many important facets. How we answer this question depends upon how we deal with these many important points of view."</p><p>At the same time, Melanie Joly does her duty by continuing to embarrass herself (and us) with further garbage:</p><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">"We must ensure that the procedural steps in this case are not used to foster antisemitism and targeting of Jewish neighbourhoods, businesses and individuals. At the same time, we will continue to stand against Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment."</span></p><p>Melanie; South Africa isn't trying to stir-up "antisemitism." Whether or not Israel is guilty of committing a genocide (and it's pretty obvious that it is) is a question of fact, not on whether the per ... OMFG!!! Did she just accuse the government of South Africa of being antisemitic??? What a fucking idiot!!!</p><p>It is comforting to know though, that Joly states that her callous indifference for the lives of Palestinians has nothing to do with anti-Arab racism or Islamophobia. I'm reasonably certain that that's the case. I believe Joly's position is based on cowardice, political calculation and moral stupidity. Of course, while speaking of Hamas as this evil, genocidal terrorist entity (and not the IDF which is morally AT LEAST as bad as Hamas, and in terms of lives murdered is thousands of times worse than Hamas), people like Joly perpetuate the stereotype of Muslims as terrorists and Muslim terrorism as some sort of irrational cultural-mental defect that comes from we know not where.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">In the statement, Joly went on to say that Canada remains deeply concerned about the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and supports urgent international efforts to secure a sustainable ceasefire.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"This cannot be one-sided. Hamas must release all hostages, stop using Palestinian civilians as human shields and lay down its arms," she said.</p><p>In other words, Israel gets to keep it's hostages. Israel gets to continue its illegal siege of Gaza. Israel gets to continue to steal Palestinian land in the West Bank. The IDF keeps its weapons (including its "secret" nuclear arsenal) and Hamas surrenders. Totally not one-sided. Joly, you are a stupid, Liberal puke. You fuck-face. You apologist for genocide. You worthless individual. You disgrace. </p><p>All you fucking Liberals. You disgust me. You have no idea how evil and stupid you are.</p><p><br /></p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-88514564167042935912024-01-13T10:49:00.005-05:002024-01-13T17:42:55.535-05:00The Disgraceful Justin Trudeau: Genocide Apologist<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpZWwQVlI33JCdefY1b2oAkoa_QqSbvTKRwSGhCAE6bovEUyhvabeLWmumAVED9fPd4sU9MmM89zvJh1e-5Sc11NFk4eDqBKtKnFXlM2rTwal7yIg0825GcsYsyBuXLXeAHIm8r7r62RpQ2f2unWqNxzk02gIMfsj7AJRlXwRfEnq1bhC1MX0csCcnNeKp/s2560/TrudeauICJ.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1707" data-original-width="2560" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpZWwQVlI33JCdefY1b2oAkoa_QqSbvTKRwSGhCAE6bovEUyhvabeLWmumAVED9fPd4sU9MmM89zvJh1e-5Sc11NFk4eDqBKtKnFXlM2rTwal7yIg0825GcsYsyBuXLXeAHIm8r7r62RpQ2f2unWqNxzk02gIMfsj7AJRlXwRfEnq1bhC1MX0csCcnNeKp/s320/TrudeauICJ.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Well, he did it. The airhead, former pretty-boy prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, has decided that <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-position-south-africa-icj-genocide-israel-1.7081896" target="_blank">slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent human beings with bombs and rockets, cutting-off all their access to food, drinking water and medical care, and saying that you are engaging in collective punishment and that you want them all to move somewhere else, doesn't constitute "genocide."<span></span></a></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>It is not beyond the realm of possibility that stupid Justin has managed to cram his tiny brain with enough stupid, incoherent rationalizations and delusions that he has genuinely confused his stupid self into actually believing the swill he's saying. But such rank stupidity is itself an indictment. An indictment as damning as if his aiding and abetting genocide is the product of cowardice, self-interest, or racism.</p><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government's support for the International Court of Justice as a key institution of international law does not mean it backs the premise of the genocide claim brought by South Africa against Israel.</span></p><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">...</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"Canada has long been a tremendous supporter of the international rules-based order and processes and structures that have been put in place over the past decades to be able to actually ensure that international law is respected and enforced," Trudeau told a press conference Friday in Guelph, Ont.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"And the ICJ, International Court of Justice, is a key part of that. Our wholehearted support of the ICJ and its processes does not mean we support the premise of the case brought forward by South Africa."</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">In a statement released Friday afternoon, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly echoed Trudeau's remarks and said Canada will watch the case before the ICJ very closely.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"Under the UN's 1948 Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide requires the intention to destroy or partly destroy a group because of their nationality, ethnicity, race or religion. Meeting this high threshold requires compelling evidence," said Joly.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"We must ensure that the procedural steps in this case are not used to foster antisemitism and targeting of Jewish neighbourhoods, businesses and individuals. At the same time, we will continue to stand against Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment."</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">In the statement, Joly went on to say that Canada remains deeply concerned about the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and supports urgent international efforts to secure a sustainable ceasefire.</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 28px; margin-top: 0px;">"This cannot be one-sided. Hamas must release all hostages, stop using Palestinian civilians as human shields and lay down its arms," she said.</p><p>Except for stupid North American and European "progressives" (like "Cathie from Canada" some writers at "CounterPunch" and "Jacobin") the vast majority of human beings on the planet know what the Israelis and the USA is doing. That is why, on this topic, imperialist propagandists haven't been yammering about how "world opinion" is on Israel's side. This is worse than <a href="https://ecfr.eu/publication/united-west-divided-from-the-rest-global-public-opinion-one-year-into-russias-war-on-ukraine/" target="_blank">the situation with Russia's invasion of Ukraine</a>. On that subject, the world's governments are inherently opposed to the idea of one sovereign state being invaded by another, but on the other hand, they are well aware of the USA's many provocations, of Russia's multiple attempts to avoid a war, of the stupidity and the recklessness of the USA's puppet nazi government in Ukraine, and of the USA's own serial invasions and meddlings around the world in past decades. The majority of the world has condemned the invasion itself but disregarded the Biden administration's hypocritical shrieking about the need to punish the Russian aggressor. On Israel's genocide in Gaza <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/un-vote-ceasefire-global-opinion-1.7058719" target="_blank">there is no such conflict</a>. Israel is an illegal occuping power; an apartheid state; and it has been engaged in illegal ethnic cleansing for decades and it is currently committing an active genocide in Gaza for which <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2024/01/06/war-in-gaza-deepens-rift-between-israel-and-rest-of-the-world_6407754_23.html" target="_blank">there is no defence</a>. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwpIC6wESCBN6ni7RzayNrrUlRSjgTqDPDxB2oGbB_YkwIXzz5ac4Guv5T-rAhOfQdccGLw1vpUXrEyKs5obbHlzOR6lPm0z-ZKedJowx2w40_7EQ6klcBbsUFWgn0wLMuqXzQiOUgUhjQ5GgPgT_FWsMvcEZHg3Y_W8qL6FOS_6GFrW_CC-1y_WmJQs_S/s3280/TRUDUMB.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2192" data-original-width="3280" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwpIC6wESCBN6ni7RzayNrrUlRSjgTqDPDxB2oGbB_YkwIXzz5ac4Guv5T-rAhOfQdccGLw1vpUXrEyKs5obbHlzOR6lPm0z-ZKedJowx2w40_7EQ6klcBbsUFWgn0wLMuqXzQiOUgUhjQ5GgPgT_FWsMvcEZHg3Y_W8qL6FOS_6GFrW_CC-1y_WmJQs_S/s320/TRUDUMB.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>Meanwhile, the CBC considers to disgrace itself by putting out this dreck:</p><p><span face=""Open Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px;">Hamas carried out an attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing an estimated 1,200 Israelis and taking more than 200 people hostage. Israel declared war on Hamas in response, unleashing months of heavy air bombardments and a full-scale invasion of Gaza. The Hamas-run health authority says more than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 58,000 Palestinians have been injured in Gaza since the start of the war.</span></p><p>As I said just recently, any "journalist" who writes something like that should find another profession. <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/palestinian-prisoners-advocate-1.7042697" target="_blank">The CBC itself has reported elsewhere</a> that over 2,000 Palestinians are being held completely without charges in Israeli prisons with thousands more being held in military detention to be tried before military courts with garbage standards of testimony and evidence, where there is a 99% conviction rate and where <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/1/22/tales-of-torture-from-israels-prisons" target="_blank">psychological and physical torture are routine</a>. Therefore, anyone but a shit-head would understand why Hamas would want to take hostages to attempt an exchange.</p><p>Secondly, it is no longer any question but that hundreds of the Israelis killed during that attack were killed by the Israeli military operating under their so-called <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/a-growing-number-of-reports-indicate-israeli-forces-responsible-for-israeli-civilian-and-military-deaths-following-october-7-attack/" target="_blank">"Hannibal Directive."</a> The IDF provided a case-study of its membership's insanity and cowardice when, <a href="https://www.972mag.com/three-hostages-killed-gaza-israeli-soldiers/" target="_blank">on December 15th, they shot and killed three unarmed, shirtless (therefore no suicide vests) young males waving a white flag who were trying to surrender</a>. Apparently the racist, cowardly monsters in the IDF didn't know that the men were escaped Israeli hostages. Apparently these sickening, racist, cowardly monsters thought they were Palestinian civilians who it is permissible for them to murder.</p><p>THAT is the Israeli Defence Forces. THAT is the nature of the entity oppressing the Palestinians. But the nauseating Justin Trudeau, and the nauseating CBC, and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2284540483658" target="_blank">the nauseating Pierre Poilievre</a> are all racist, shit-for-brains cowards and war criminal scum. And so they support them.</p><p>Supporting genocide is about as bad as it gets. There's really nothing worse that a society can do. There is no further depth for it to sink to. I remember watching the harpercons getting away with torture in Afghanistan. Now it's the Trudeau Liberals (and pretty much every other mainstream politician) making excuses and rationalizations for Israel's mass-murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians through bombings and perhaps what might turn out to be a million more via starvation and disease. </p><p>Talking about "uniting Canadians" when some of them oppose genocide while others are racist, deluded, hypocritical, self-pitying, whining scumbags is stupid. Do these zionist nazis not remember that their soul-mate Adolph Hitler likewise believed that Germany was "under attack" by the "Jewish menace"? That he had his own witless, deluded, racist persecution complex? These fucking Israeli zionists and their friends abroad would be quite well-suited to be skipping hand-in-hand with Hitler through fields of daisies. That's how disgusting, stupid and evil they are.</p><p><br /></p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-26491103903596741392024-01-12T07:13:00.004-05:002024-01-12T10:12:00.380-05:00Interesting Times<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNAEzB-9ZBbo2qg-22ioG7O_q6xjxIFl9y9IF2yc_GbNJIKW43ZfnCt-no_wH2ktEYGGQ-cjuTphljGE0V22-5Wmod97TYkDqEjl49QGro-0TPvIxdKSPIbTQjtompILnmfeVdDTODlwJWGcSdtsodfTuqKgFb4bdasfqMNpW0hsYOl8gMvgKKBUvcSPYm/s284/confucius.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="284" data-original-width="155" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNAEzB-9ZBbo2qg-22ioG7O_q6xjxIFl9y9IF2yc_GbNJIKW43ZfnCt-no_wH2ktEYGGQ-cjuTphljGE0V22-5Wmod97TYkDqEjl49QGro-0TPvIxdKSPIbTQjtompILnmfeVdDTODlwJWGcSdtsodfTuqKgFb4bdasfqMNpW0hsYOl8gMvgKKBUvcSPYm/s1600/confucius.webp" width="155" /></a></div><br /><p>It's apparently <a href="https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/may-you-live-in-interesting-times.html" target="_blank">not true</a> that the Chinese had a curse: "May you live in interesting times." Be that as it may, we are living in interesting times. My reaction to <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/01/12/magical-thinking-about-biden-2024-paves-the-way-for-another-trump-presidency/" target="_blank">this CounterPunch article</a> about Democratic Party USA activists' disillusionment with Joe Biden is that this is how a civilization collapses.</p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"></p><blockquote><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Defenders of sticking with Biden glibly dismiss negative poll numbers while noting that polls in January can’t tell us where persuadable voters will end up in November. But there’s a serious problem beyond just polls. It’s the disaffection of activists – pivotal because thousands of talented, hard-working activists are needed to help persuade voters on the fence, and to get-out-the-vote of traditional Democrats who are only “occasional voters.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">During the Covid-haunted election of 2020, thousands of grassroots activists and groups – including many who were Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren supporters – devoted months of their lives to defeat Donald Trump after Biden became the Democratic nominee. Overall, many progressive groups went all in for Biden when it came down to him or Trump in the fall of 2020.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">But in 2024, many of these experienced activists are disaffected from Biden if not outraged at him, over issues from Gaza to <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.businessinsider.com/black-democrats-frustrated-with-joe-biden-voting-rights-reform-2022-3&source=gmail&ust=1705083674142000&usg=AOvVaw1ZYXH4L1bzUE2IdVTWD1n7" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/black-democrats-frustrated-with-joe-biden-voting-rights-reform-2022-3" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">voting rights</a> to <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/climate-march-biden-aoc&source=gmail&ust=1705083674142000&usg=AOvVaw3Pb04f3998cIFpcdlxrGde" href="https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/climate-march-biden-aoc" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">climate</a> to student debt.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Five hundred people who were campaign or party staff members in 2020 – recalling that they “fought tirelessly to organize millions of Americans to cast their votes” for Biden – have now signed a <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://medium.com/@bidenalumnipeace/dear-president-biden-8a41e0b444dd&source=gmail&ust=1705083674142000&usg=AOvVaw2oj848KyJwVSdf3GO_ctFS" href="https://medium.com/@bidenalumnipeace/dear-president-biden-8a41e0b444dd" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">well-informed letter</a> urging Biden not only to work for a Gaza ceasefire, but also to “end unconditional military aid to Israel” and “take concrete steps to end the conditions of apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing that are the root causes of this devastation.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Will there be enough diligent volunteers to get-out-the-vote for Biden in 2024? Not according to current Biden for President staffers who say <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://medium.com/@BidenHQforCeasefireNow/dear-president-biden-we-need-a-ceasefire-now-f48b732b2433&source=gmail&ust=1705083674142000&usg=AOvVaw02W1Ai1eVslAsDn24HIne6" href="https://medium.com/@BidenHQforCeasefireNow/dear-president-biden-we-need-a-ceasefire-now-f48b732b2433" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">volunteers have “quit in droves”</a> over Biden’s handling of the Gaza war – adding: “It is not enough to merely be the alternative to Donald Trump.”</p></blockquote><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"></p><p>Make no mistake about it: Fascism is a toxic-stew of irrational fears and delusions that is never far from the hearts of many right-wingers. Religious women who believe in "manly men" who uphold whatever stupid traditions they were raised to comply with will suppport fascism. Racialized males who hate feminists, homosexuals, members of different racialized minorities, and philosophies that challenge their prejudices, will either have their own fascist movements or sign-up with mainstream white fascist movements. It's more a state of mind than a coherent ideology. And Donald Trump's state of mind is fascist and his appeal is fascist.</p><p>Neoliberalism, by destroying the economy and impoverishing the majority, has created a breeding ground for fascism. Neoliberal liberals (which is to say, advocates of deregulated capitalism who aren't conscious bigots or racists) make proto-fascists hate anti-racism and gay rights and whatever other causes that liberals embrace. "Enlightened" capitalists don't care about the colour of your skin, or about the sex that you're attracted to, or the religion you follow, or if you even follow a religion at all. As a person, all they care about is your money. As a worker, all they care about is to exploit you. As a citizen, all they care is that you are powerless to interfere with them. It costs them nothing to advocate for equal rights for everyone to be a capitalist cipher to be fleeced and exploited and discarded. When some socially conservative working class person gets fucked-over by neoliberalism, and there's a right-wing politician telling them about single-mothers on welfare as the root of all their problems, they start to see red.</p><p>I'm not saying that entities like the Democratic Party USA or the Liberal Party of Canada need to start pandering to right-wing assholes. They just have to stop fucking everybody over. But they can't help themselves because they're amoral, stupid assholes. And so we have the right-wing all fired-up with their hypocritical grievances of stolen elections and persecution (although, with "Russiagate" the stupid Democrats stupidly gave them plenty of genuine ammunition) and we have progressives so uninspired by the standard-bearer of a dying system that they can't bring themselves to do it anymore.</p><p>I would never vote for someone like Biden. I will never vote for the Liberal Party of Canada again. If the neoliberals really grasped the threat of Trump, the threat of fascism, ... well, they would stop the policies that breed more and more fascists everyday. And they would at least respond to the genuine grievances of the people they need to combat this threat and try to meet them at least halfway. But they don't care. Either because they're magnificently deluded, or they're arrogant, or some damned thing.</p><p>Regardless. We're all going to die horrible deaths.</p><p>I will note that the CounterPunch article I've linked to ends rather abruptly:</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 19.7685px;"></span></p><blockquote>While establishment Democrats are intent on whistling past the Biden graveyard, there’s a different kind of magical thinking among some who consider themselves to be on the left – a fantastical pretense that it doesn’t really matter whether Trump becomes president again. People who think that Trump and his leadership team are not fascistic, or that a Trumpite return to the presidency wouldn’t be much worse than abhorrent Bidenism, are out of touch with political reality.</blockquote><p></p><p>When he's not acting like a sneering misogynist towards Caitlin Johnstone, or arrogantly yammering about the books he's reading and the music he's listening to, Jeffrey St Clair is busy fund-raising so that he can post the unpaid work of pretty much anyone who wants CounterPunch's audience. Bad poetry, imperialist talking-points on Ukraine, all sides of the UAW's recent strikes, pro-Democratic Party propaganda? Fine. A bit of sloppy editing, and he can get back to his hobbies. It appears that in this case Jeffrey screwed-up and didn't post the last part of the article. That, or the authors erroneously believed that they've made their case for still voting for "Genocide Joe."</p><p>I wonder what Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon's answer to the disaffection of people (including former Sanders supporters) who held their noses and campaigned for Biden in 2020 but who can't bring themselves to do so again? Will Cohen and Solomon step-up and canvas for Biden? Did they do so in the past? What have they been doing since 2020 as Biden has betrayed the working class again and again (unless we count those pro-Biden articles on CounterPunch that say he's been a hero for the working class) to build an alternative? To respond to the hellish nightmare we're all stuck inside?</p><p>This lack of a realistic analysis is why we're all going down in flames.</p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-169500200250146612024-01-10T13:52:00.006-05:002024-01-10T16:34:51.753-05:00Neither Trump nor Biden<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjVk3bCHnaCdeuDzRVWAWRu3-P6uC7XwVfo3JqkgQ9MG0D_MPYfH-QhXLqXXJQVlPYY0UgI5rW2uJsV0OL-SyU9mc_SJ-Zp1DrGq-jXOvHDSiKjFtmvJI0Vyw3QBPLu_dxnbsnvc1cEUC3AnXglFaTwKvLq-0fUUgMpvJMjSYAKkG7-CG5bNLw_KNj1q-v/s2551/winken1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1573" data-original-width="2551" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjVk3bCHnaCdeuDzRVWAWRu3-P6uC7XwVfo3JqkgQ9MG0D_MPYfH-QhXLqXXJQVlPYY0UgI5rW2uJsV0OL-SyU9mc_SJ-Zp1DrGq-jXOvHDSiKjFtmvJI0Vyw3QBPLu_dxnbsnvc1cEUC3AnXglFaTwKvLq-0fUUgMpvJMjSYAKkG7-CG5bNLw_KNj1q-v/s320/winken1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>I have long been nauseated by the shameless, soulless psychopathic mediocrity named Antony Blinken. A few years ago he was yammering about how <a href="https://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.com/2021/01/us-american-idiots.html" target="_blank">Iran was a threat to stability in the Middle East</a>. His next achievement was <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=b832364576240b7fJmltdHM9MTcwNDg0NDgwMCZpZ3VpZD0zZGZhMGRlZS1iOTc2LTY1NGItMTdlOS0xZjhiYjhkYzY0M2EmaW5zaWQ9NTIzOA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=3dfa0dee-b976-654b-17e9-1f8bb8dc643a&psq=nato+rejects+putin+accord&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9nbG9iYWxuZXdzLmNhL25ld3MvODQ5NjMyMy91cy1uYXRvLXVrcmFpbmUtcnVzc2lhLW1lZXRpbmcv&ntb=1" target="_blank">arrogantly refusing</a> all of Putin's efforts to avoid war in Ukraine, thereby condemning MILLIONS of Ukrainians to death, dismemberment and disapora. (What probably pisses Blinken off about the way things turned out in Ukraine is that NATO's weakness has been exposed and all of Europe is finding out that the USA's promises are empty, even when they're made to white people.) Russia has handed the USA a gigantic diplomatic and military failure. And make no mistake about it: Ukraine will collapse just as suddenly as the military of our puppet-government in Afghanistan collapsed. Just as idiots (like Joe Biden) were babbling stupidly about the numbers and the weapons and the training of the Afghan National Army up to two days before it completely evaporated, there are still lying or deluded shit-heads talking about isolated Ukrainian victories (real or imagined) as that country of 11 million people without money or industry starts to scour everywhere it can to put elderly men, pregnant women and the least-wealthy university students into the line as the fourth wave of cannon-fodder.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>Antony Blinken, ... the worthless son of a worthless family, with no talents or abilities, ... <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/06/30/america-has-just-destroyed-a-great-empire/" target="_blank">so stupid and deluded in his bubble of privilege</a> that he genuinely believed he could sit across the table from the Chinese and lecture them about human rights, democracy and international law, only to receive a dressing-down that almost had him in tears.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ_czWRkocDT1cHXYVNNI5nSThRR4xajLKSSRnbLVt7jt8ow8yytvWpze-89mnN3euAcCLn3pj6OxBtK9MsVwD322YLy7krBSdqAFm4Vx6kVIKlQrfSoQu7yeF2S5waW0vl-CaGz70d44pNYdDdopX_ygcc9n3uRjF36BnMwbPv5hHkUm2QAFskVksEYKu/s2471/winken2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1563" data-original-width="2471" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ_czWRkocDT1cHXYVNNI5nSThRR4xajLKSSRnbLVt7jt8ow8yytvWpze-89mnN3euAcCLn3pj6OxBtK9MsVwD322YLy7krBSdqAFm4Vx6kVIKlQrfSoQu7yeF2S5waW0vl-CaGz70d44pNYdDdopX_ygcc9n3uRjF36BnMwbPv5hHkUm2QAFskVksEYKu/s320/winken2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>And now, this disgusting piece of shit is claiming that the case for saying that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza is "meritless." </p><p style="color: #222222; font-family: Lora, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"></p><blockquote><p style="color: #222222; font-family: Lora, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">In the same speech in which he admitted that 90% of people in Gaza are <a class="rm-stats-tracked" href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-starvation" style="color: #005dc7; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">facing acute food insecurity</a> amid Israel's blockade and bombardment, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed on Tuesday that South Africa's lawsuit accusing Israel of genocide is "meritless" despite the exhaustive evidence set to be reviewed by a United Nations court this week.</p><p style="color: #222222; font-family: Lora, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">"We believe the submission against Israel at the International Court of Justice distracts the world from [humanitarian] efforts," said Blinken at a press conference in Tel Aviv, where he met with Israeli leaders. "And moreover, the charge of genocide is meritless."</p><p style="color: #222222; font-family: Lora, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">The charge Blinken was referring to was <a class="rm-stats-tracked" href="https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf" style="color: #005dc7; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">exhaustively detailed</a> in an 84-page complaint <a class="rm-stats-tracked" href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/800-groups-icj" style="color: #005dc7; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">submitted by South Africa</a> to the ICJ, the U.N.'s top judicial body, which is planning to hold a hearing on Thursday and Friday regarding the manner.</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>...</p><p style="color: #222222; font-family: Lora, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby last week <a class="rm-stats-tracked" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/09/us-slams-south-africas-meritless-israel-genocide-suit.html" style="color: #005dc7; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">dismissed</a> the lawsuit as "meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever," and State Department spokesperson Matt Miller <a class="rm-stats-tracked" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us-not-seeing-acts-genocide-gaza-state-dept-says-2024-01-03/" style="color: #005dc7; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">told</a> reporters that the U.S. is "not seeing any acts that constitute genocide."</p><p style="color: #222222; font-family: Lora, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">But while dismissing South Africa's evidence on Tuesday, pointed out<em> Intercept </em>reporter Prem Thakker, Blinken noted that nearly 2 million people in Gaza are facing starvation.</p><p><span face="Lora, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 20px;">"Blinken calling accusations of genocide against Israel 'meritless' in the same moment he cites the United Nations warning about starvation in Gaza is notable not just because of the contradiction, but because of the U.S.'s own recent behavior at the U.N.," Thakker added, citing a number of recent votes for a cease-fire which the U.S. opposed or vetoed.</span> </p></blockquote><p style="color: #222222; font-family: Lora, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"></p><p>"<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/south-africa" target="_blank">Meritless</a>." That's a good word for <a href="https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/01/08/tony-blinken-is-a-cold-blooded-sociopath/" target="_blank">Antony Blinken</a>. He has no merits. None. He's a goddamned war-criminal with the blood and trauma of millions on his hands and whatever exists of his conscience. He should be arrested for war crimes and if found guilty condemned to a cell for the rest of his life. Together with John Kirby and their demented boss Biden.</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">US Secretary of State Antony Blinken just referred to the US-sponsored assassination of yet another journalist in Gaza as a “terrible tragedy”, as though the reporter was struck by lightning or died in a car crash or something.</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">Speaking at <a href="https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-qatari-prime-minister-and-minister-of-foreign-affairs-mohammed-bin-abdulrahman-al-thani-at-a-joint-press-availability/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">a press conference in Qatar</a> on Sunday, Blinken was asked to comment on the murder of Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Dahdouh, who was killed in Gaza by an Israeli airstrike on a car has was traveling in with two other journalists, one of whom also died. Hamza Dahdouh was the eldest son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, whose wife, son, daughter and baby grandson were <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/10/26/al-jazeera-journalist-family-abdelaziz-pkg.cnn" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">murdered in another Israeli airstrike</a> in late October.</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">In response to an Al Jazeera reporter’s question about whether the United States condemns the murder of innocent journalists, Blinken replied as follows:</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><span style="font-style: italic;">“I am deeply, deeply sorry for the almost unimaginable loss suffered by your colleague Wael al-Dahdouh. I am a parent myself. I can’t begin to imagine the horror that he’s experienced, not once, but now twice. This is an unimaginable tragedy, and that’s also been the case for, as I said, far too many innocent Palestinian men, women, and children — civilians, also journalists, Palestinian and other.”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">Blinken went on to acknowledge the scores of journalists who have been killed in Gaza, saying that this shows the need to get humanitarian aid into the enclave and achieve a lasting peace. What Blinken did not do is issue anything resembling a condemnation of Israel and the clear and demonstrable fact that it has been <a href="https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1744003004972318939" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">highly focused</a> on the task of murdering journalists in Gaza. He just offered his deepest condolences for Dahdouh’s death, framed it as a passive “tragedy” instead of an active assassination using highly sophisticated military technology under the sponsorship and support of the United States, and moved on.</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">It’s hard to say who’s worse, the far-right Israelis who openly revel in the butchery they are inflicting in Gaza, or the liberal Americans who directly sponsor that butchery and then look you dead in the eye and tell you how deeply, sincerely sorry they are to hear that another person in Gaza has died in a tragic accident.</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">Blinken is always doing sociopathic stuff like this. Late last month he <a href="https://twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1740389282446266720" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">tweeted</a>, “This has been an extraordinarily dangerous year for press around the world. Many killed, many more wounded, hundreds detained, attacked, threatened, injured — simply for doing their jobs. I am profoundly grateful to the press for getting accurate, timely information to people.”</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">I mean, can you believe the gall of this freak? As though his own administration wasn’t responsible for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/dec/08/journalists-killed-imprisoned-2023-ifj" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">most of those killings</a>. As though Israel has not spent the last three months directing <a href="https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1744003004972318939" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">wildly disproportionate firepower</a> at the places <a href="https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">it knows journalists are hiding</a>. </p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">He’s standing there on top of a pile of corpses while mournfully shaking his head about their tragic unfortunate deaths.</p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"></p><p>I would say that Blinken has befouled the administration of Joe Biden but that would mean that Biden himself is not a foul, loathsome, disgusting vermin. A useless, stupid, stupid man.</p><p>Shouldn't sane people look at a culture that produces something as absurd and atrocious as a contest between such truly worthless, hideous abominations as Donald Trump and Genocide Joe Biden and finally decide that it has gone too far. The system is incurably rotten. It needs to be overthrown and replaced. </p><p>I would never vote for the fascist Trump or the liberal-genocider Biden were I given the opportunity. It is immoral to demand that people vote for someone as evil and debased as Joe Biden.</p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2022452485619502579.post-27321015009010550242024-01-09T14:36:00.005-05:002024-01-11T19:51:49.297-05:00Even More Victories<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy9LwGmIeGWlfUUReRqzxAki4PaSrSTneA1BXBmRZVzkBSjKzVSqSgYTl0tr-F1_2xABQl4EqOkALnLwFwmxmvC92PA6i9VXwSe2HX36UcFy2LkVhf_-0hBqylTH7bNQ10Qz2-TRqXmvuomoGhHKO4PDR19J-6wuWSX1epV-j6WmhqxipXI46Xy-Nbp-i2/s1020/xpansif1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="1020" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy9LwGmIeGWlfUUReRqzxAki4PaSrSTneA1BXBmRZVzkBSjKzVSqSgYTl0tr-F1_2xABQl4EqOkALnLwFwmxmvC92PA6i9VXwSe2HX36UcFy2LkVhf_-0hBqylTH7bNQ10Qz2-TRqXmvuomoGhHKO4PDR19J-6wuWSX1epV-j6WmhqxipXI46Xy-Nbp-i2/s320/xpansif1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Jacobin has a story about "<a href="https://jacobin.com/2024/01/canada-ceo-pay-inequality-housing-tax-policy" target="_blank">Canada's New Gilded Age</a>." Here's some highlights:</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;">Welcome to “Canada’s Gilded Age.” That’s what the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) is calling the era of runaway corporate salaries and bonuses. The name is fitting. <a href="https://policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2024/01/canadas-new-gilded-age.pdf" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 3px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">In a new report</a>, the think tank finds that 2022 was a smashing success for CEOs, who broke records with an average annual pay of $14.9 million — a surge of $600,000 above their 2021 remuneration. It’s good work, if you can get it.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;">However, for the rest of us that aren’t corporate executives, the struggle to make ends meet continues. The average CEO salary shakes out to 246 times the earnings of the average worker, which means that by the morning of January 2, chief executives had earned as much as one of their workers does in a year. </p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;">...</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;">The CCPA reveals that CEO salaries grew by 4.4 percent last year — amounting to an average increase of $623,000. ... Workers, on the other hand, saw a 3 percent pay bump, translating to a meager $1,800 for the year. When put against the inflation rate, this essentially means they took a hefty pay cut, compromising their ability to meet basic needs such as food and housing and transportation.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;">A fall report from Food Banks Canada found that more people accessed a food bank last year than in any year since it began collecting data in 1989. In March 2023, nearly 2 million people in Canada <a href="https://web.foodbankscanada.ca/cn/avlfe/2024-renewal/?utm_campaign=13001_FBC_Renewal&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_content=V1_VersionA&apl=DMRENEWAL2024&pck=googlesearch&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAy9msBhD0ARIsANbk0A9ToCoSVVxUvre5LPYG-DuI1PkO_gvqRfVske2vLf115Y6_ZeQNSMkaArWgEALw_wcB" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 3px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">relied on a food bank</a>, and more than 17 percent of visitors were employed. According to <a href="https://foodbankscanada.ca/hungercount/" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 3px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">HungerCount 2023</a>, food bank use has surged to 80 percent higher than 2019 levels, with one month witnessing over 640,000 visits by children.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;">The housing market softened in Canada last year, but the housing crisis is still firmly entrenched, putting tremendous pressure on workers and others struggling to afford shelter. The <a href="https://rates.ca/resources/how-much-mortgage-can-median-household-income-afford-these-cities" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 3px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">average</a> home price in Canada in the fall was $757,600, according to RatesDotCa — or 141 percent more than most people can afford.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;">In cities like Toronto and Vancouver, the situation is even more dire, with home prices at 250 percent and 210 percent of the affordable level, respectively. Renters face an even bleaker scenario. Average rents for a one-bedroom apartment in November 2023 was $2,174 — with units in Vancouver going for $2,866, with Toronto close behind at $2,594.</p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"></p><p>My reaction to reading stuff like this is to ruefully chuckle at all the times I read other left-wing writers talking about our movement's recent victories. "We stopped this." "We achieved this." "We merely organized around this because even that is to be considered a victory."<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwHfzppteEkDqqAxX_kMhQW9BNyTxX87IGML2DKT8ginQrPubn3rine9xmj3u1xGLttc65NNGjvNMDUSof0jPMnEgsvalIprxIKbKcG4yhP06cE8E-hQSnzLXgDtKXyrljXHCdd2XuRlfT1BEt1IwKv-3EV0yn6AN-hbnOCN9GN4qtXpVhZQxYdXk94k-l/s2048/xpansif2.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwHfzppteEkDqqAxX_kMhQW9BNyTxX87IGML2DKT8ginQrPubn3rine9xmj3u1xGLttc65NNGjvNMDUSof0jPMnEgsvalIprxIKbKcG4yhP06cE8E-hQSnzLXgDtKXyrljXHCdd2XuRlfT1BEt1IwKv-3EV0yn6AN-hbnOCN9GN4qtXpVhZQxYdXk94k-l/s320/xpansif2.webp" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>As I've said; I'm a pessimist. I tend to anticipate the worst. It isn't the best way to look at the world. Most people are more optimistic than me. The species wouldn't survive if most people felt the way that I did. But just as pessimism isn't always accurate or healthy, neither is optimism. This compulsion to see victories where there aren't any, or where they're so negligible that they don't matter because the losses outweigh them, ends up obscuring reality. And, if the reality is that for all of our patting ourselves on the back for our victories we, the working-class, the union movement, human rights, the eco-system, etc., continue be impoverished, weakened, violated and destroyed, the end result will be our doom.</p><p>Obviously SOMETHING has been accomplished by the exertions of leftists and progressives. Important criticisms and analyses have been written that newbies to our causes can learn from. Sometimes the worst ambitions of the oligarchs have been stymied. Institutions exist in some form or another around which people can mobilize. But the overall trajectory has been against us. And I'm not trying to tell people to give up. I'm trying to tell them to stop seeing success where there isn't any. Not to be a downer. But to stop you from ignoring the reality of our failure and continuing in the same ineffectual way that has allowed the oligarchs and the militarists and the polluters to continue to destroy civilization, us, and the eco-system.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQg7brwF28fL_n_X2sFYW8pqFeeka-XMz1HE8MOTQjhD7xAPS2f-J_aW7qIVpqMpZLlb7860XG9YT97gwpQYW9d3BX4wIHx_fQBqKG0md-meV2EiAC3xB931m9iRN7GwbfpwWY8n0PekZxAsQ3YJg2WXKMxEWReWsuGKOLUrMhpbko1g43jiNmKRAvmTK5/s1778/xpansif3.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="996" data-original-width="1778" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQg7brwF28fL_n_X2sFYW8pqFeeka-XMz1HE8MOTQjhD7xAPS2f-J_aW7qIVpqMpZLlb7860XG9YT97gwpQYW9d3BX4wIHx_fQBqKG0md-meV2EiAC3xB931m9iRN7GwbfpwWY8n0PekZxAsQ3YJg2WXKMxEWReWsuGKOLUrMhpbko1g43jiNmKRAvmTK5/s320/xpansif3.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>The <i>Jacobin</i> article outlines some ways that a potential government could counteract this trend to inequality. </p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"></p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;">The CCPA recommends introducing new top income brackets targeting extreme pay. Revenues from the bracket could be redistributed to fund social programs, infrastructure, and other prosocial undertakings. In the same spirit, they call for a wealth tax to achieve these goals.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;">Addressing the favorable tax treatment enjoyed by the rich, the think tank suggests that Canada should eliminate the rule that sets limits on the deductions a company can take from pay packages. This means that pay over a million dollars would no longer count towards a tax break against corporate earnings. They also recommend an increase in the capital gains inclusion rate. Since shares often make up CEO pay and generate capital gains when sold, they are currently taxed at a preferential rate compared to earned income. Right now, a mere 50 percent of capital gains are taxable. The CCPA argues we ought to tax a greater proportion of capital gains, and they’re right.</p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: #191919; font-family: Rosart, serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px;"></p><p>Don't expect the Conservatives to do anything like that. We all know that any Conservative Party of Canada talking about the interests of "ordinary working Canadians" is just posturing. The CPC is only about worshipping the oil patch, destroying environmental regulations and ensuring that the price of labour is as cheap as possible and the regulation of the labour market as non-existent as possible. They'll cut taxes for both billionaires and the working poor and make up for it by slashing services and applying user-fees to what services remain. Whether some of these idiots actually believe that their 19th-Century ideas will super-charge the Canadian economy and produce a plethora of jobs is unimportant. We know they won't and even if they, themselves were forced to admit that their policies have failed, they wouldn't change them. Because they're servants of the employer class.</p><p>Don't expect the Liberals to do anything about housing prices. If they did anything serious about addressing the supply situation housing prices would plummet. People would hold mortgages more expensive than their property after that. Which would piss-off a lot of potential voters, but more importantly, it would piss-off the banks. Because people would walk away from their mortgages and the banks would be left with losses. And that must never happen according to the Liberal Party of Canada. They'd come up with some sort of sleaze-ball "solution" to keep the banks whole. Just like the Democrats did in the USA. Remember how the fraud-created housing bubble in the USA collapsed and right-wingers blamed it on 1970's programs to prevent banks from "red-lining" minority neighbourhoods for loans? The Obama administration bailed-out Wall Street, turned a blind eye to the banks foreclosing on properties they didn't own, and subsidized keeping devalued housing off the market until private-equity firms figured out how to profit from short-term rentals and predatory landlordism.</p><p>That's enough for now. I've got shit to do. Just remember the main point. If things are continuing to get worse it means we have to think that maybe our tactics up to this point have been flawed.</p><p><a href="https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/01/11/biden-is-everything-people-feared-trump-would-be/" target="_blank">Caitlin Johnstone the day after I posted this.</a> (Which is not to insinuate that I thought it first. Just to explain why I'm adding it now.)</p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px;">We’re all just standing here praying that this lunatic doesn’t ignite yet another horrific war in the middle east while watching him unapologetically sponsor a genocide in Gaza, and we’re still a ways off from emerging safely from the world-threatening nuclear brinkmanship his administration dragged everyone into with Russia in Ukraine. And it’s hard not to notice that this all sure looks an awful lot like what liberals were terrified would happen when Trump got into office.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px;">...</span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">In the end Trump turned out to be <a href="https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/everyone-was-wrong-about-trump-79faface949c" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">a fairly standard evil Republican president</a>. He <a href="https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/trump-has-murdered-over-40-000-venezuelans-with-sanctions-6eb3e7f0eb7f" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">sanctioned Venezuelans into starvation</a>, <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/trump-vetoes-resolution-to-end-u-s-support-for-war-in-yemen.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">vetoed attempts to save Yemen</a> from the US-backed atrocities of Saudi Arabia, <a href="https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/full-scale-war-is-avoided-and-trump-goes-right-back-to-warmongering-e4169d69a8c0" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">assassinated</a> Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/22/assa-s22.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">imprisoned Julian Assange</a>, and, despite the <a href="https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-1.php" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">incredibly virulent mass delusion</a> that he was a secret agent of Moscow, spent his entire term <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/19/25-times-trump-has-been-dangerously-hawkish-on-russia/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">ramping up cold war hostilities against Russia</a> with extreme aggression.</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">All of which were monstrous. But none of those crimes rise to the level of <a href="https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/biden-could-end-all-this-with-one" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">single-handedly facilitating</a> a genocide in Gaza or taking the world closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis with his <a href="https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/this-war-wasnt-just-provoked-it-was" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">peace-killing</a> <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-russia-talks/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">efforts</a> in <a href="https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/nato-chief-openly-admits-russia-invaded" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Ukraine</a>. </p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">Biden has turned out to be everything we were warned Trump would be: a genocidal monster fueling racist violence and crimes against humanity while imperiling the world with insanely reckless foreign policy decisions.</p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Newsreader; font-size: 19.8093px; line-height: calc(1em + 0.75rem); margin-block-end: 0px; margin-block-start: var(--wp--preset--spacing--50); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"></p><p>Onwards n' upwards!!!</p>thwaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15399550285738440669noreply@blogger.com2