Israel . . . As Expected

UN secretary general, António Guterres, said that the 7 October attacks by Hamas had to be seen in the context of decades of occupation of the Palestinian people. He said: “It is important to … recognise the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”

Gosh, and the reaction to his speaking the truth?

Israeli and its propaganda machine went bonkers. Next, I suspect, will be Israeli air strikes on the UN building in New York.

All the Secretary General asked was “What did you expect to happen?”

This, of course, laid bare the strategy of Israel, to reduce the Gaza Strip to an ungovernable mess, while they use illegal “settlements” to decimate the land supposedly granted to the Palestinian authority, leaving a unified Israel, run by Jews for Jews. By having these dustups with Hamas or whoever, there is no pressure on Israel to participate in the fictional “peace process” and they can continue working on their long game without international interference. (Hey, they have admitted this in public. It is not a secret.)

Please notice that Hamas has continued to do what it does and with better and better tech involved. If Israel really wanted to do away with Hamas, they are either incredibly inept or they prefer to have Hamas around as an ongoing threat. And while Hamas has been accused on not caring about the deaths of Gaza citizens, not one peep has been heard about Israel’s acceptance of a few hundred deaths of Israeli citizens ever so often, to keep the pot boiling.

Postscript And, no, I do not condone “terrorism,” in any form, either that of Hamas or of Israel.

The Ukraine Mess

There are blog posts galore about how the Ukraine invasion isn’t what it is being portrayed as. There is substantial back story. There are this and that that really need to be taken into account to be able to assign blame.

So what? Is any international conflict portrayed in any way realistically, without bias? I haven’t seen it if it has happened before.

Basically I do not care what the justifications Putin or Zelenskyy have. I believe in self-determination and an invasion by a country undergoing no existential threat is to be opposed, always. Full stop.

I won’t say “Slava Ukraini” as glory is not appropriate, but I support Ukraine, even to the point of pouring billions of dollars of our own money into the coffers of our arms makers to replace the somewhat out of date weapons we are sending them. (No we are not sending forklift loads of cash to Ukraine as the Repubs claim, we send them weapons we already have paid for and are using the money authorized to replace/upgrade the arms given.)

Hypocrisy 101

La Rochefoucault said “Hypocrisy is the compliment vice pays to virtue.” This is embodied by the current debate here in the U.S. surrounding the Russian incursion into Crimea. Basically American politicians are running around saying something along the lines of “American good, Russia bad,” except, well, the Fox (sic) News crowd who have a man crush on President Vladimir Putin, a man’s dictator if there ever was one.

Hello?

The U.S. is the country that came up with the Monroe Doctrine, a principle first espoused in 1823 (unilaterally, of course) that basically said “Hands off our hemisphere” to the then European world powers. In practice, according to Noam Chomsky, “the Monroe Doctrine has functioned as a declaration of hegemony and a right of unilateral intervention over the Americas.”

So for 150 years or so we used this spurious doctrine to justify our intervening, overtly and covertly, any damn where we wanted in our hemisphere for any damn reason.

Russia is exerting that same right regarding countries contiguous to itself . . . and in their hemisphere. Outrage! Outrage! They can’t do that!

Only we can do that.

Can you spell hypocrisy, boys and girls?