Punished For Not "Rising Up" to Overthrow Hamas

 

One thing that the zionist nazi Netanyahu and his like-minded racist scum say to justify their genocide of the Palestinians is that the men, women and children of Gaza should have "risen up" to overthrow the illegal, terrorist regime of Hamas.  But, instead (says the nazi Netanyahu) they obviously support Hamas.

Leaving aside for the moment that Israeli citizens supporting their country's apartheid regime, with many of them voting for nazi-like political parties, makes them liable to the same criticism, and, therefore, the same treatment, we need to consider the following facts that make the argument of Israeli Hitlerites so fucking stupid.

Innocence

 

The only reason women backstab each other is because the patriarchy distorting their minds.

The only reason a working class person would think something racist is because the capitalists divide people to conquer them.

We would all be happily living in harmony with nature if not for capitalist advertisers creating artificial desires.

Mutual aid is a fact of nature and the lamb would lay down with the lion but for ... I don't know, ... bourgeois science?

If only we could be as innocent as children who NEVER demand anything and who NEVER grab things from each other.

There is no God or gods.  There is no good or evil.  There is just energy.  Blind, purposeless energy.  

The self is an artificial construct.  But there is no enlightenment to be found in the abandonment of the self.  If you want to become "one" with blind, purposeless energy, ... good luck.

There are things that hurt and things that create temporary pleasure.  Pain and pleasure are neither good nor evil in themselves.  They are sensations felt by sentient carbon-based bags of mostly water.

Perhaps "happiness" always tends towards equilibrium.  Like, John Cage said at the idea that there's too much pain in the world.  Maybe there's just the right amount.

Rich, beautiful people have their little constant desires.  People who have known great suffering are happy for relief.

Two Random Speculations

 

It's my understanding that Joe Biden doesn't like the English because of his Irish ancestry.  Which is ridiculous because why the fuck should anyone care?  He doesn't side with the Palestinians against the Israelis.  He doesn't side with African Americans against Whites.  He imposes the same sort of hegemony worldwide on befalf of the US Empire (Bill O'Reilly's "White, male, Christian power-structure") that the English used to inflict on their Empire in the 18th and 19th Centuries.

2024 Federal Budget

 

Crystia Freeland is a right-wing neoliberal.  Justin Trudeau is an amoral air-head.  The Liberal Party of Canada is a party of amoral, opportunistic freaks.  Even at that, they represent the slightly more socially conscious aspect of Canadian capitalism.  The possess the "intellectual rigour" (for want of a better term) that doesn't see yet more cuts to taxes and spending and further de-regulation as the solutions to any and all economic problems.  So when (from the headlines of stories that I can't be bothered to read) the CBC is only presenting the responses of Pierre Poillevre, Bill Morneau, and other right-wing assholes, I decided to see what the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives had to say.  (That link goes to a page of collected budget responses from several Canadian lefty organizations.)

Armaggedon

 The Book of Revelation is a silly piece of writing.  But the very real possibility that Netanyahu is prepared to risk World War III to keep himself out of prison, along with the sad, sick truth that our debased political culture means that the USA's leadership will consent to this, and blame the people Israel attacks, has caused me to worry about this "work of prophecy."

Because John of Patmos (or whoever) wrote that the final battle of the world would be at Har Meggido, or Harmageddon in Greek.  And Tel Meggido is in Palestine:

And there are plenty of ridiculous US politicians who believe in all this "End Times" mythology and they're thinking this too.  They're thinking of helping bring back the Second Coming of their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and Judgment Day.

The Consequential President Biden

 I don't have time to watch this now but it is something I'm interested in and I want to be able to watch it later.  Perhaps any of my two or three readers might take a look at it as well.  It was the first entry in the weekend political-economy wrap-up at Ian Welsh's blog.

I don't follow things too closely anymore.  I know that Biden has passed things (even watered-down, unnecessarily expensive and inefficient because of the inclusion of private sector profiteers) that the Republicans wouldn't have even thought of doing.  But I also know that he has made stupid excuses for not doing things, like allowing the hitherto unknown entity of the Senate Parliamentarian to abandon raising the federal minimum wage.  The biggest thing that I've heard that Biden is doing though is appointing actually decent people to rule on corporate mergers and competition.  "Antitrust."

Something relevant to my last post ...

 In my last post about CBC coverage of the Gaza genocide I responded to the one-sided coverage of Israel's claim that the battle against Hamas militants was pretty much over:

 It also provides an opportunity to give someone from the Israeli Wehrmacht time to gloat about the military defeat of Hamas without giving anyone from Hamas a chance to respond.  Hamas has always been a lightly armed military force.  So it has always been incapable of large scale military offensives.  But are they still killing Israeli soldiers?  We don't know.  We've seen plenty of footage of IOF members acting like idiots inside homes devastated by Israeli bombs.  But for all we know, in northern Gaza, Hamas operatives could still be emerging from tunnels and picking off Israeli soldiers on a daily basis.

There's been almost zero reporting on IOF casualty figures.

Later in the day I saw this Richard Medhurst video:

It shows footage from last week of IOF foot-soldiers being ambushed and another video of a tank being destroyed.  Whatever you think of Medhurst's commentary, when he says that Israel is probably lying when they publicly acknowledges only around 250 dead IOF, he's probably right.  The numbers of wounded are far higher and standard ratios of killed to wounded in war point to a much higher figure.

[Also, I just have to say that I don't think the IOF soldier in the thumbnail is grinning at the camera.  I don't even think he knows it's there. He's just looking around frantically and happened to look into the hidden camera's lens.]

CBC Headlines During Israel's Genocide of the Palestinians

 

So, this morning, the big stories were about the Bank of Montreal being sued by customers about fraudulent e-transfers and another story about Trudeau's testimony about whether China paid to bus some Chinese-Canadian seniors to a polling station to elect a candidate they allegedly liked.

As well there was this one: "Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh says 3 sons in Gaza killed by Israeli airstrike."

First of all, while hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are being deliberately starved to death and while there is ongoing video footage available of this, the CBC has refrained from showing images and interviews with starving parents and their concerns for their starving children.  Likewise, footage of psychotic Israeli civilians colluding with the Israeli Wehrmacht to block food and medicine from entering the Gaza strip and turning their blockades into a holiday, is likewise readily available.  I daresay either one of these stories would make for compelling news and guarantee high ratings.  But to juxtapose these stories would have Canadians up in arms and would put enormous pressure on the Trudeau government to punish Israel.

Cultivators of Chaos

 

"Islamism."  "Antisemitism." "Illegal immigration." These are three things that one or both of the liberal/conservative divide obsess about.  But a look at current events and the history of the past half-century clearly shows that our elites clearly can't be too concerned about these issues since they do so much to perpetuate them.

Let It Never Be Said That You Didn't Do The Least You Could Do.

 

Send an email to that shit-head Justin Trudeau.

Pushing Back Against a Degenerate Culture

 

I just wanted to salute Jonathan Glazer for taking his moment at the completely out-of-touch Oscar Awards ceremony to speak out against Israel's genocide of the Palestinians.

Thank you so much. I’m gonna read. Thank you to the Academy for this honor and to our partners A24, Film4, Access, and Polish Film Institute; to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum for their trust and guidance; to my producers, actors, collaborators. All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present — not to say, “Look what they did then,” rather, “Look what we do now.” Our film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present. Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the — [Applause.] Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist? [Applause.] Aleksandra Bystroń-Kołodziejczyk, the girl who glows in the film, as she did in life, chose to. I dedicate this to her memory and her resistance. Thank you.

Of course, the shameless, garbage-brained zionists immediately starting braying about how Glazer is a Jewish antisemite, but who gives a fuck what those mass-murdering racists think or say anymore?

Genocide is genocide.  All of humanity is one.  Do not condemn or hate anyone for their ethnicity, their religion (or lack thereof), or the colour of their skin.  Fight back against oppression and injustice.  Be the best person that you can be.

Also: Respect to Aaron Bushnell.

Living Within A Degenerate Culture

 

So, we all remember (and cringe whilst doing so) when our House of Commons gave a standing ovation for a former member of the Waffen SS.  Apparently the stupid leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada were told that he had fought the Russians in World War II.  And, of course, Russia is our official enemy now.  And it therefore stands to reason that we've always been at war with Eurasia.  Or is it Eastasia?

Biden's Psychopathic Lying

 

So, even though the deteriorating imbecile, the corrupt racist and rapist, the hater of Social Security, one of the godfathers of the USA's nightmarish Prison-Industrial-Complex, one of the propagators of the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" lie that led to the criminal invasion of Iraq, ... AKA the "Lesser Evil," ... Joe Biden, has been caught lying again.

"'Obscene': Biden Quietly OK's More 2,000 lb Bombs, Warplanes for Israel"

The Rally for Gaza at Yonge & St Clair on March 24th

I woke up Sunday, March 24th certain that I was sick.  I wasn't going to go to the gym.  I started a new job last Monday and learning the ropes and adjusting to the new hours and some exterior stresses apparently took a lot out of me.

But it was a sunny day and I felt well enough to attend the rally protesting the genocide in Gaza as that was the least that I could do.  So I walked down Yonge Street (much slower than I usually move) and arrived a tiny bit after the 12:30 pm start time.

Caitlin Johnstone on Media Complicity in Genocide

 

Caitlin Johnstone dedicated a post to the same topic of my last post: "Imagine if Russia or China Did the Things Israel Is Doing In Gaza."

Imagine how the western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China was bombing and starving a walled-in population of two million, half of them children. Seriously, imagine it. Imagine the rage and vitriol. Imagine the nonstop media coverage. 

When Russia invaded Ukraine, US media coverage of that war exceeded the media coverage of all US wars in the previous three decades. If Russia were deliberately and systematically exterminating civilians in Ukraine or anywhere else, the western media coverage of those war crimes would be many times more. 

It’s almost cliché at this point to say “imagine if Russia or China did this”, but such comparisons are important for retaining a sense of perspective on just how evil the western political-media class is being about Gaza right now. We’re seeing articles come out in the mass media about starvation in Gaza which never once even mention the word “Israel”. Do you think that would be happening if this were being perpetrated by a government which defies the western empire? Of course not.

A previous posting by her had been about how many things are being destroyed in Gaza.  One of them was "Western Civilization."

Media Complicity in Genocide of the Palestinians

 

Here are the top stories at today's CBC News website: The ISIS attack in Moscow, Kate Middleton's cancer, a new security law in Hong Kong that Western hypocrites are crying crocodile tears over, and Trump being unable to post a $400 million bond.

The first story on the second tier is "Russia, China reject US-led Gaza ceasefire resolution at the UN."  It's not bad, so far as Western "journalism" goes.  It is clear that the Russians reject a motion calling for an "imperative" FOR a ceasefire, and not for a ceasefire itself.  It mentions that 60% of the children in Gaza are reported as malnourished but then uncritically provides some Israeli-nazi pig saying there's no hunger and that aid is getting in.

The story also mentions a raid on the Al-Shifa Hospital.  That raid has its own story with a separate headline: "Israel says it has killed 90 gunmen after raid at Al-Shifa Hospital, an allegation Hamas denies."  The story would be much improved by mentioning that Israeli nazis have lied consistently about the hospital being used by Hamas as a base for military operations.

Out of thirty-one stories, the deliberate mass-murder of perhaps 200,000 people and potentially over a million more by starvation in the coming weeks, there are two headlines.  Both stories give a respectful hearing to the nonsensical lies of the Israeli nazis.  Israel is a protected ally of the USA's and Canada.  We're sending them weapons and they're commmitting a genocide and we're yammering like shit-heads about Russia's plans for world domination.

The CBC knows what it's doing.  "Sins of ommission."  To help Israel perpetrate a genocide.

Jonathan Cook (via Consortium News) lays it all out in "How Western Media Built the Case for Genocide."  

Faced with a plausible case of genocide — one being televised for months on end — even the liberal elements of the Western media have shown they have no serious commitment to the liberal democratic values they are supposedly there to uphold.  

They are not a watchdog on power, either the power of the Israeli military or Western states colluding in Israel’s slaughter. Rather the media are central to making the collusion possible. They are there to disguise and whitewash it, to make it look acceptable.

Indeed, the truth is that, without that help, Israel’s allies would long ago have been shamed into action, into stopping the slaughter and starvation. The Western media’s hands are stained in Gaza’s blood.

Read the whole thing.

I could only watch five minutes of these disgusting idiots

 The Grayzone has footage from inside the zionist/nazi citizens starvation brigades ...

This is the sort of moral garbage that the Trudeau Liberals and the Poilievre Conservatives support unequivocally.  These assholes HAVE their country.  They want Gaza and the West Bank too.  And guess what?  Some of these nutjobs look to their goat-herder era religious scribblings and believe they're entitled to more on top of that.  This delusional greed is the cause of the violence but these morons still think they're at war with Hitler. 

Idiots.

Richard Medhurst Documents Consequences of Israeli Barbarism

 Have started a new job and my sleep is off and I don't have the time to write anything today.  But I thought that I'd share this Richard Medhurst video where he discusses trying to grasp the enormity of Israel's crimes in the Holocaust in Gaza.

This is the evil that Biden, Trudeau, Joly, Freeland, Poilievre, ad nauseum support.

"Human Shields" n' Other Stuff

 

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.

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.

Macron Needs to be Locked Up

 

If you don't read M. K. Bhadrakumar's blog, 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.

Bhadrakumar mentions French President Macron's defending his recent outburst about sending French troops to fight Russia in Ukraine:

Joly Calls Gaza Massacre "A Nightmare"

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 nightmare." 

OTTAWA - 

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.

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.

"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."

What a disgusting idiot she is.

Caitlin Johnstone on Aaron Bushnell

 

"A Profound Act Of Sincerity"

One of the main reasons the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell 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. 

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. 

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 real. Something as authentic and sincere as anything could possibly be, with the very noblest of intentions.

The Courage of His Convictions: Aaron Bushnell

 “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.”

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.

Trudeau be-shits himself in Ukraine

 

So our airhead, pro-genocide, neoliberal dimbulb prime minister Justin Trudeau paid a "surprise" visit to Kiev yesterday.  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!" ???

Response to an "Off Guardian" Piece About the Global Oligarchy

 

So here is my response to this Off Guardian piece: "The 'they're all in it together' rebuttal canard (Multipolarity is a crock)" 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.)

I have bittersweet memories of The Guardian.  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.

And then I developed my bittersweet memories of Off Guardian.  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 Off Guardian's increasingly unhinged denial of reality caused me to unsubscribe from their newsfeed and I hardly read them now.

Trump, Biden, and Clinton (Hillary) - a brief note

 

Even though Purple library guy already wrote an excellent critique of the Off Guardian article that had been offered by another [anonymous] commenter, about the global hegemonic oligarchic order, there are still some things I'd like to say about it and I will probably at least begin working on that tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'd just like to post a brief bit of observation and speculation.

Scumbags

 

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.

The Trials & Tribulations of Rob Oliphant

 

Hind Rajab, murdered by the IDF

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, Rob Oliphant, 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.

The "2+2=4 Controversy"

 

In response to this post about the toxic behaviour of zionists, commenter "zoombats" mentioned an article in The Guardian by Kenan Malik 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."

Toxic Behaviour Part II

 

In Part I I mentioned how I saw a similarity between genocidal zionists and scumbag oil executives.  How could these human beings be such complete, entitled assholes?

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.

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 we 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.

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.

El Salvador & Our Future

 A right-wing authoritarian has won re-election in El Salvador.  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.

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 political commodity in elections.

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 Nunca más — “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 December 2023 poll by the Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública.

...

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.

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.

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.)

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.

The Oil Weapon

 In 1973 the Arab OPEC countries punished countries that had supported Israel in the Fourth Arab-Israeli War by imposing an oil embargo on them.

In October 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) announced that it was implementing a total oil embargo against the countries who had supported Israel at any point during the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, which began after Egypt and Syria launched a large-scale surprise attack in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to recover the territories that they had lost to Israel during the Third Arab–Israeli War. In an effort that was led by Faisal of Saudi Arabia,^[2] the initial countries that OAPEC targeted were Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This list was later expanded to include Portugal, Rhodesia, and South Africa. In March 1974, OAPEC lifted the embargo,^[3] but the price of oil had risen by nearly 300%: from US$3 per barrel ($19/m³) to nearly US$12 per barrel ($75/m³) globally. 

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.

Just some idle speculation on my part.

Toxic Behaviour (Part I)

 For some reason, I looked at the picture and the headline from CommonDreams:

"In 'Brazen Wealth Transfer' , Exxon and Chevron Pay Out Record Sums to Shareholders"

... 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.

Utterly Disgusted With Canada's Defunding of UNRWA

 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 defending Israel against charges of genocide and defunding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).  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.

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.

Trudeau can make all the mewling noises that he wants; whether its voting for a ceasefire at the UN General Assembly or mildly rebuking an openly racist Israeli "Victory Conference" in Jerusalem, where card-carrying members of the Israeli Nazi Party say shit like:

"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."

None of these token acts mitigate Trudeau's slavish devotion to Israeli apartheid or blind us to his complete lack of moral integrity.

Sad Comparisons

 

I'd been thinking about this subject before I read Caitlin Johnstone's great essay: "Gaza Is Exposing Western Liberals For The Frauds They Are."

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Liberal Foreign Minister's Support for Genocide is a "9 to 5" Thing

 

Canadian MP's are universally pissed-off that protesters rallying against Canada's support for Israel's genocide of the Palestinians went to Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly's home:

thwap's 2024 readings

 

Well, another year.  (Here's last year.  Here's the first book depository.)

2024-01-18

Today I finished Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

One Hundred Years of Solitude 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.

The inevitable and inescapable repetition of history is a dominant theme in One Hundred Years of Solitude. 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.

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.

Kursk

 

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 "Friedman Unit."  [A "Friedman Unit" is named after airhead Zionist-imperialist Thomas Friedman who wrote propaganda for the New York Times.  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.]

Genocide is as bad as it gets (Jan. 16th completed)

 

Years and years ago I heard about a book with the title Eating People is Wrong.  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.  

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.

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.

The Disgraceful Justin Trudeau: Genocide Apologist

 

Well, he did it.  The airhead, former pretty-boy prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, has decided that 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."

Interesting Times

 

It's apparently not true 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 this CounterPunch article about Democratic Party USA activists' disillusionment with Joe Biden is that this is how a civilization collapses.