or ban the U.S.

I’m an ice hockey fan and the Russian team hasn’t been allowed to compete in international tournaments since it invaded Ukraine. The western world is outraged by Russia’s illegal, aggressive, attack on Ukraine and it goes without saying they should not be allowed to compete (and also because they might win).

This is interesting because the United States and Israel have launched an illegal, aggressive attack on Iran and no sports or cultural organization has the nerve to challenge their right to compete. The U.S. just had a team in the World Cup. For that matter when George W. Bush invaded Iraq there was no talk of sanctions at all. The problem may be simple bias. “The West” is tied up with the American market and American politics and American military power. I won’t say it depends on it but it is obviously hard to untie. No-one wants to brave what the response would be. It’s another Gaza: what’s wrong when an enemy does it is just fine when a friend does it.

The United States use sanctions on other countries more often than anyone and often at the drop of a hat. Where are the countries willing to sanction them? Their economy is too large and important to Europe for Europeans to protest. The American economic and military power even has other countries afraid to trade with Cuba, and Cuba hasn’t invaded anyone.

Trade relations between the western powers are frayed and there is anger with the U.S. So since no political party will say it, I will. Ban the U.S. and Israel from international sports competition. If Russia can’t play because they attacked Ukraine then the other two should get the same. Either the Russians should be able to play with everyone else, or all three countries should be excluded. Can you imagine American TV networks if the U.S. was kept out if the World Cup or the Olympics? Just think of the bluster and charges of anti-semitism if Israel couldn’t participate in Eurovision.

The hypocrisy of the west has been on display lately in such a way that even westerners can’t help but notice. Free, democratic, law-based, human-rights-affirming nations like the U.S. and Canada and the U.K. and Germany have been turned around by the genocide in Gaza. Suddenly international law and human rights take a backseat to political alliance with Israel. Even to the extent that genocide, which should be a very bright red line, becomes not only acceptable but defensible. They go blind and can’t even see it, which makes them hypocrites. The fund, finance, support, defend, make possible, and encourage genocide which makes them criminal.

Sometimes it seems like the western world exists for the benefit of the U.S. and when that usefulness fades America turns on or abandons it. Pulling out of NATO, abandoning Ukraine, the U.S. not only puts sanctions on a country but sanctions any other country that trades with them, whether that country’s policy embraces sanctions or not. Who does that mean? Any Western European country trying to trade with Cuba or Iran faces punishment from the U.S.

The world is scared of the U.S. Maybe not Russia or China, but the western world. That is why no-one suggests banning American athletes (and by extension Israeli athletes) from international competition. Why poke the bear over something as figurative. The west is not as afraid of putting sanctions on Russia as it is putting them on the United States. Why would that be? Who is the greatest threat to world peace? Who has the most unstable leader? Who has the track record of kidnapping foreign leaders and assassinating foreign Generals and imposing starvation sanctions and facilitating genocide and stealing resources and threatening allies and imposing tariffs and attacking countries? Who is the trouble maker in the world?

It’s another example of might-makes-right, or perhaps, if you will, wealth-makes-right. We have money in and on the U.S.. Banning U.S. athletes would be subjecting our side to the same standards we use to judge the other side. It’s a lesser version of the discounting dead Palestinians and being shocked and outraged over dead Ukrainians. Did I mention Ukrainians are white? And Palestinians are brown?

Send Him Off

They tell me Lindsey Graham has died. He was sick and he just kind of faded away. Which is sad because he was a real warrior and I’m sure he would have rather died fighting in one of his wars. Killed while while in hand to hand combat with a Palestinian six year old maybe or shot down while flying over Iran bombing school girls.

At least he died while in his garage torturing puppies so he went doing something he loved.

They say if you live by the sword you die by the sword but Lindsey never really used violence himself. He was a quiet warrior, an intellectual, he stayed home and thought of reasons others should fight. Some call that being a war monger or chicken hawk but I call it being smart. Because he never fought in any of the wars he sold to the public he was able to live on and promote even more wars.

They say the good die young but Graham made it to seventy-one before dying and what’s more no-one assassinated him, or bombed him, dropped white phosphorus on him or starved him to death. It was a dignified death. There is enough of his body left he can have a open casket. If that doesn’t prove he was a man of God then nothing does.

Don’t mourn his loss too much. There is no shortage of others ready to encourage bombings and support genocide and call for war in Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. There will be no shortage of malicious, evil, war mongering, hateful, lying, figures to carry on Graham’s good work. He blazed a trail for others to follow.

Before you get caught up in his turn about on Trump, first. opposing and then supporting him, “Graham… likened Trump’s winning the nomination to “being shot in the head” and said he refused to vote for Trump that November. But the pair later bonded over golf and what Graham described as a mutual and irreverent sense of humor.”

That a warmongering Never Trump piece of chicken hawk shit like Lindsey Graham could bond with a corrupt declared felon who lies like a blanket like Donald Trump over golf means golf must be worse than we thought. Get money out of politics but if you can’t at least get golf out of it.

In Lindsey’s defence it’s not like he’s alone. American politics, punditry, and media, are rife with figures hair-trigger ready to support a war. Lindsey stood out for his never wavering devotion to America’s wars and, quite frankly, for being gay. It’s a stereotype I know but one doesn’t expect a gay effeminate man to be calling for war and destruction and murder and assassination and starvation and using nukes. Unless he was compensating for something. I know there must be LGBTQ2S+ people who are assholes but it’s unusual to see one come so close to power.

Right wing churches may struggle to accept gay men but right wing politicians stand with open arms as long as they promote the Empire. Of course, they also embrace rapists so maybe that’s faint praise.

Lindsey’s death reminds us all of a great truth, namely, that Donald Trump will not live forever. Trump’s health seems to be declining quickly (he is eighty), falling asleep in meetings, regularly slurring words or mistaking countries. Donald Trump will die. There will be an America after Trump. Most of us will be here to watch his funeral on TV. There’s an old saying that says a tyrant can kill everyone but his successor.

If a politician or a party runs on sexism, racism, xenophobia, cruelty, and lies, then as long as they win elections they will continue to run on sexism, racism, xenophobia, cruelty and lies. And why not? It’s obviously working. Burn them at the poles so hard they realize that’s not productive for them anymore and they will have to change or die. Then you can start on the Democrats.

There is something new come up around here. Alberta Separatists who want independence from Canada. It’s been talked about for a while but recently has been getting more support from the Alberta (conservative) government.

It’s not clear whether the goal is actual independence or joining the United States. Think of it as our version of Brexit. We all know how that worked out for the U.K.

If I was paranoid I would look for the U.S. to fund Alberta’s separatist movement in Canada the way the Russians did the separatist movement in Ukraine. We know Trump sees us as the fifty-first state and would love to see Canada collapse so he can pick up the pieces and besides, it’s typical superpower behaviour.

In Ukraine there was a small separatist movement in Donbas near the Russian border. Russia sent money and agents and the separatists took over the government declaring independence in Donetsk and Luhansk. Then there were votes under the watchful eye of Russian troops declaring they wanted to be part of Russia.

”The U.S. has declared a form of information warfare against us. They’re going to use everything that they can to destabilize our country, to disrupt us, potentially to break us apart in order to execute on their national security strategy,” Patrick Lennox, a former RCMP intelligence manager said.

”You can see artificial intelligence being used to drive narratives about Alberta being almost like Texas,” he said, “Memes and other AI-generated nonsense that suggests there’s a large Texan immigrant population in Alberta that’s yearning to be free.”

“Separatist social media messaging aims not only at an Albertan or Canadian audience, but also at persuading a U.S. audience that Albertans are oppressed and really do want out. If conflict ever did arise, outside audiences might be more likely to see it as a dispute between Canadians, rather than a reaction to foreign interference,” said Maria Popova, a political science professor at McGill university.

I got these quotes from an online CBC news article and they worry me. Superpowers are always ready to interfere in other people’s countries because, hey, there’s no point in being a superpower if you can’t run the world.

We still don’t trust the U.S. and it would be so easy for them to do. Pierre Trudeau (elder) used to warn that the U.S. would treat Canada just like it treated Guatemala if it was in their interests.

We feel like the U.S. looks at us the way Epstein looked at a twelve year old. Easy prey.

I think of Brexit and how easily a simple vote can ruin things. In the new age of colonialism called for by the United States there are no places left untouched by old colonialism so obviously it must involve taking over existing countries. Trump has claimed that North and South America are his sphere of influence, which is to say, his control. America has a veto over who forms government or what the government’s policies are in the Americas. That means Canada too.

The bottom line is that we can’t trust the U.S. Europe can’t trust the U.S. Central and South America can’t trust the U.S. We are all dependent on the great powers feeling benevolent, deciding that today they’ll not go after your country because they will be too busy taking over someone else’s.

You got Capitalism.

Someone told me the other day that they went in to a grocery store and almost bought groceries. Almost. But the prices had gone up again and he had to leave ungroceried. I had to explain to him that corporations are not in it for their health. They don’t exist to provide groceries to people. They don’t exist even to just sell food. They exist to make a profit and they just happen to use groceries as a way to do that. They don’t care if you personally can afford their goods but only that enough other people buy them so they can move inventory. It’s the money that matters not the particular person.

How do you make a profit? By keeping the cost of production as low as possible, which means keeping wages to workers and payments to farmers as low as they can get away with, using the cheapest ingredients, socializing the environmental costs, and fighting for low taxes. But that is only part of the equation. The other part is to charge the consumer as much as possible to maximize revenue.

The goal is not to make a profit but to make the maximum conceivable, possible, profit. That means charging what the market will bear. If you are willing to pay four dollars for a loaf of bread that is all the justification they need for charging four dollars for a loaf of bread. That’s why prices never come down – if they know you will pay four dollars why on earth would they lower it to three. If you don’t buy at that price but enough other people do to sell out their bread than the price stays high. The only power the consumer has is to refuse to buy. If enough people refuse to buy that it effects their bottom line, they will lower the price.

Of course, since it is food we are talking about, refusing to pay the prices means not eating. So ultimately the consumer’s greatest power is to starve and die. If enough of us starve and die that the sales go down something will happen. Either prices come down or wages go up.

But, you say, groceries are an essential. Well, that just goes to show how smart it was to go into the grocery business, doesn’t it. Too bad you didn’t think of it. Shareholders demand a corporation’s profits go up every year and a CEO’s main goal is to see their shares go up in value, remembering also the they are paid partly in shares. That is also why if given a tax cut they will buy back shares from shareholders. It drives the price of the remaking stocks higher.

If you want an answer to the question, “why are prices so high?” ask the people who set the prices. They have to consider labour costs, rent, fuel, hydro, advertising, and ever increasing profit. There’s nothing governments can do, at least here in Canada. Break up big grocery chains? That would be unCanadian. Price controls? Never, but wage controls sound good. A wealth tax? We had one but the new government (Mark Carley’s Liberals) cancelled it. The government might cut your taxes, which means cutting services, but not by enough to keep up with inflated costs.

All you and I can do is wait for the invisible hand of the free market to bring prices down or wages up. Because the one thing you can’t do is suggest they make a little less profit than they know they can.

Just a little

I’ve heard Americans talk about themselves as the indispensable country, a city on a hill, the arsenal of democracy, the birth place of freedom, the defender of human rights, the greatest country on earth, all while bombing other countries around the world and backing dictators and backing genocide for so long that I almost grin when things in the USA go wrong. A tiny bit of schadenfreude.

Canada is intimately tied up with US power and economic strength, and, apparently, their goodwill in not invading us, so I am probably hurting myself more than anyone, but is it wrong for me to hope Iran wins the war? That Israel and the United States come to regret starting it? Whatever you think of the Iranian government it is clear the the U.S. and Israel are the persecutors. When they cry crocodile tears and wring their hands about human rights violations in Iran one only need say the word “Gaza” to see them immediately deflate.

A war of choice they call it. It’s an unprovoked invasion. Countries like Russia that stage unprovoked invasions ( of Ukraine) face sanctions. Russia is banned from participating in international sporting events. Let’s wait and see if Israel or America are told they can’t play. You know the answer as well as I do. It will never happen. It didn’t happen when America invaded Iraq unprovoked. Or kidnapped the Venezuelan president. Or as it starves Cuba. Or when NATO destroyed Libya.

The U.S. alone could totally destroy Iran, bomb them back to the Stone Age, and perhaps they will try. Israel has nuclear weapons and is run by religious extremists. Would Israel refrain from using nukes if it looks like they might lose? Who would stop them? Where is the nuclear arsenal offering mutually assured destruction? Not in Iran. If you are a religious fanatic would mutually assured destruction even stop you from blowing everything up?Who is the religious fanatics, Iran which is an Islamic state hasn’t invaded anyone, or Israel who think Gods wants them to kill Palestinians. Where are the famous Judeo-Christian ethics in the U.S. Unless killing muslims is one of them I don’t think I see any. And I hate to keep pointing this out, but Iranians aren’t white.

Maybe I don’t want the U.S. to lose. Maybe I just want them bloodied and humbled and to learn a lesson. A lesson about pretending to be saintly while acting like the devil. Pretending to be above the fray when you’re really down in the muck flinging it at people. I’d like Russia come to to curse the very idea of invading Ukraine. I’d like Israel to find the price of genocide is its own dismantlement.

The first thing I think of when I think of the President of the United States is, “this guy could get us all killed.” The speed and ease, the thoughtlessness, with which countries go to war identifies humans as destructive, greedy, violent creatures. Or at least those are the creatures we give money and power to. The average citizen may have nothing against Iran but the strata at the top has needs that must be met. War maybe hell but it isn’t hell for everyone. It’s not hell for war cabinets or arms dealers or oil companies or private contractors. And that’s unfortunate because they are the very people who should be in hell.

And Christians, my own kind, endorse, support, and call for war. Or timidly suggest peace in ways no-one need notice. If the church condemns war it will put itself at odds with the state and therefore power. Jesus’s call to love your enemy has never for one moment been considered, by any state ever at all. Peace is impractical. Wars get things done. Raises stock prices, fascinates the media, makes heroes, positions and strengthens politicians, and goes in the history books. As long as you can bomb some place that doesn’t have the capacity to drop bombs on U.S. cities it’s never a bad move. George W. Bush faced no repercussions for invading Iraq, or Obama for destroying Libya and Trump will not be prosecuted for attacking Iran. No wonder the U.S. refuses to acknowledge the International Criminal Court; who commits more international crimes? What country “destabilizes” the Middle East more than Israel – fighting in Palestine, invading Lebanon, seizing parts of Syria and launching an unprovoked attack on Iran. War destabilizes regions and it’s not hard to see who is warring the most.

I guess it doesn’t matter. Nothing can stop it. No one ends up in jail. Genocide is just one more option in a list of options governments have. Wars come and go and come and stay. Might makes right – but it probably always has.

Individually each of us is alive because no one has wanted to kill us badly enough. So far.

So, the U.S. has started another war. They seem to do that a lot. It’s like rape. They have contempt for foreigners (women) and like any good incel when they can’t get their way easily. (sex) are always plotting to strike out with violence (mass shootings).

First, let’s deal with the arrogance. Americans believe not just that they are the best country in the world, but that that gives them rights over everyone else. American Exceptionalism is a real thing in their minds. After all, somebody’s got to rule the world. It’s a heavy burden and a thankless task but one God has called them to do. Dictators who cooperate with U.S. policy are fine. Dictators or democratically elected governments that don’t cooperate must be destroyed and replaced with leaders, dictators or otherwise, who do. It’s in the national interest.

Secondly it’s racist. Think back, way back, to the last time the United States bombed a white country. WWII? You might say Russia in the Ukraine but the Nazis didn’t consider Slavs as human, let alone as white. The American people support wars because they are always fought in other people’s countries. Vietnam had no airforce that could drop bombs on Chicago or Detroit so it was safe to fight them. Syria had no ability to counter-attack in America. Neither did Libya or Iraq or Grenada. Those countries (Somalia) had weak militaries that posed no threat to the homeland because they were poor and had no way of retaliating against Americans in America. It’s in the national interest.

As well, Israel. Trump’s obsequiousness to Israel can only be attributed to money because that’s what Trump mostly wants. He could probably be bribed to resign. Why Biden was the same way is simply that he self-identified himself publicly as a Zionist, so he wanted what Zionists want. Destroy the Palestinians, claim the land, expand borders, be a regional, the regional, superpower. Israel also represents America in the region – Israeli power is American power. So, obviously, a dominant Israel is important to America. It’s in the national interest.

We know why Israel wants the U.S. to destroy Iran; it will allow the Greater Israel movement to go forward. That is, Israel’s desire to expand it’s national borders to include parts of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt – from the Nile to the Euphrates as they say. So what’s in it for Americans? Oil and the mind rush that comes with displaying power over someone else (read: countries; read slavery, racism, foreign wars). Not every country in the world wants to be a superpower but it is important to the American psyche that they be able to think of themselves that way. It’s part of the national interest.

Iran challenged Israel and U.S. by having its own, non-cooperative, foreign policy. Challenges to a superpower must be eliminated otherwise your not a superpower. American hearts would break if the had to be like Norway or Canada: peaceful, quiet, with a normal sized military. The fact that the war budget in the U.S. is over a trillion dollars explains its political values. The country may be falling apart with poverty, pollution, homelessness and medical crises but like any declining empire it’s last hope is to throw everything at the military so while you ignore and can’t sympathize with Americans domestic problems by God America is still a superpower. Don’t look behind the curtain. It’s not in the national interest.

Gaza Still

It will be interesting to see how nations respond to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians once it’s reached its goal. We can’t say “never again” without admitting it was genocide and making a mockery of the last time we said “never again” – after the Nazi holocaust.

I’m talking about governments not the public. The public has seen this slaughter occur in real time, online. You cannot delete that knowledge or justify what happened. But governments can. Media can. Think tanks can. Israeli lobbyists can. And all those are the people of record. The ones who write the records of history; in other words the victors. Not just the Israeli government. The genocide is also a victory for U.S. policy and U.K. policy and for German policy.

A victory for Israel is a victory for western governments. At some point the public will begin to realize that Americans should be happy about the ethnic cleansing and should be pleased with the genocide and rather than be shocked or outraged or angry or saddened we should shout it from the rooftops – how no-one can defeat us now that we’ve gotten over the “no genocide” thing.

This won’t be the last time genocide happens any more than Rwanda was of Sudan is now. In fact it becomes easier now since no country can complain or interfere in it. The pattern is set.

In Canada the constitution has a Not Withstanding clause that allows governments to over-ride judges and the Supreme Court and say this bill will become law even if it’s ruled unconstitutional. Back in the nineteen-eighties when it was written we were told no politician would ever dare use it because that would be the end of their career. Until one province used it and no careers were stopped. Then another province used it and the sky didn’t fall. Violating the constitution didn’t cost you any votes. Now multiple province use it.

It got easier to do once it became clear there was no political price to pay. Genocide will be easier to do now that we know there is no price to pay. Genocide is just another political option like any other. Anyone who wants to make Israel pay for its crime will find it hard. Students can be deported for protesting. The call for boycotting, divestment, and sanctions is actually illegal in some states. A politician in the west who speaks out about Palestine gets funding cut by the Israeli lobby and even more lobbyist money devoted to defeating them next election.

If rich domestic people can influence politics than rich domestic. lobbyists for for foreign countries can as well.

What does the west need from Israel? Israel is a nuclear armed military base to project power from. Obviously the stronger Israel is the better to project that power – Israel occupying land that used to be in Syria or Lebanon or Gaza or the West Bank can only strengthen that. Israel is also able to lead the world in face recognition, surveillance, controlling population groups, restricting people’s freedom, ai aided bombs, and just a general proving ground for western weapons.

The west is tying itself to Israel’s destruction of the Palestinians for the obvious reason that Israel is a moral clone of the west. Before Israel was even a country the west was a settler-colonial place. America was committing genocide against its native population, also for the purpose of ethnic cleansing. It was also based on racism and greed for territory. How different is that from what Israel is doing? Well, for one thing we are supposed to know better now.

If person A commits a crime and gets away with it that gives person B the unequivocal right to do the same. If the police fail to solve one murder it gives everyone the right to murder too. Or at least that’s the way it’s assumed to go. That’s one of Israel’s defensive arguments. Other countries have committed genocide why single Israel out? You must be antisemitic – it’s the only possible explanation. Unless you are Jewish – in which case you are a self-hating Jew.

If something as outrageous as supporting genocide has no consequence, what does that mean for the next war? The Palestinians are brown but Venezuela, Cuba are full of brown people too, are they not?

and back.

There I was happily working away writing another criticism of Israel’s still-going-on genocide in Gaza when the United States goes and invades Venezuela. Now I’ve got to start all over again writing about the kidnapping of Maduro (and, for some reason, his wife).

Why would President Trump do such a thing? Well, first of all who’s going to tell him he can’t? We live in a might-makes-right world. The U.S. does things like this because no-one can stop them. That’s the same reason Israel kills Palestinians – because they want to and they can, so they do. Who’s going to stop them? You? Congress? Canada? The U. K? France? And again, if Trump invades Greenland who’s going to stop him? Russia? NATO? Denmark?

When one NATO country attacks another NATO country what does NATO do? It isn’t going to go to war against America. The U.K. will write serious letters to American diplomats, call for the respect for international rules based order (something they don’t see as important in Gaza) and then sit down and shut up. Germany’s relationship with the U.S. is far more important to them than their relationship with Greenland.

American “intervention” – read “interference” or “invasion” – in Latin America always works out to be worse for the people of the target country, but it’s important to remember that it’s not done to improve domestic Venezuelan life. If that was the goal America would not have put crippling sanctions on it first. We will never know how much poverty in Venezuela (which is blamed on Maduro being a socialist) is actually the result of U.S. sanctions.

Sanctions are considered an act of war and usually precede a shooting war. First weaken the country economically, starve their military, then when they can’t take care of their own people, invade. That was done with Iraq and Venezuela, and is half-way done in Iran.

The U.S. is not a benevolent power. We can see from Gaza that the U.S. isn’t motivated by human rights or democracy or concern for the lives of foreigners (of course, we could see the same in their support of Saudi Arabia). Like the relationship with the dictatorial Saudis, the action against Venezuela is about oil and access to it. Trump even says so.

The obvious (and odious) greed of it is apparent to everyone, or at least everyone who is not American. American interference in other countries has historically been couched in Cold War battle-against-communism terms. It meant America’s target was always left wing governments or groups. Now? Same thing. The insulting and blatantly arrogant. Monroe Doctrine is America claiming a right to control the western hemisphere and its governments and people, but with American interests always the deciding factor. Venezuela exists to serve U.S. interests. If it strays from that goal by setting independent economic or foreign policy it has forgotten its role and must be brought back to heel.

The truth is America has never been a benevolent player internationally, or, ironically, domestically. Washington ignores or even creates obstacles to Americans flourishing. Poverty, unaffordable health care, anti-union activities and no-limit grocery prices don’t move anyone in government. The government doesn’t care about American lives what makes you think they’ll care about Palestinian or Venezuelan lives? Trump doesn’t care if Americans end up homeless, can’t afford their medical bills, or if there is a mass shooting every other day. I can say that because all those things are happening to people and nothing is being done.

The American empire is truly fraying. It cannot, and no longer tries to, cover its exploitation of other, weaker, places. Trump wants America to “run” Venezuela and take what he calls “our” oil. Invading another country for its resources is something any American president, would, and has, done, Democrat or Republican. But they would try to cover it up, talking democracy and freedom. Trump comes out and admits it’s an oil grab.

Regime change wars never work out well for the people of the targeted country. Not in Libya, not in Afghanistan, Iraq or multiple Central American countries over the last seventy years. But that’s because the people in those countries forget that first and foremost they exist to serve Washington’s corporate interests.

So who’s next, Panama? Canada? Greenland? California?

Now that the genocide in Gaza is over (it is over, isn’t it?) or at least when the genocide in Gaza is over it’s time to talk about consequences.

There will be no consequence for Biden or Harris because no one in the U.S. wants there to be.

The consequences for the Palestinians have already been paid in death, starvation, homelessness and destruction. The question is if they will be allowed to stay on their land or not. Consequences for Trump would mean getting his resort built but what of. Israel? Will any country arrest Netanyahu because he has a warrant out on him or should we just assume the old boys club will protect him?

Netanyahu in prison for war crimes is still a minority opinion in the west no matter how you or I may feel. Any western government that arrests the Israeli leader for war crimes faces explaining why it supported and enabled those very same crimes. Israel got away with genocide so there’s probably nothing they can’t get away with.

Beyond the individual crimes of individual politicians and soldiers there is the great unanswered question of reparations. Gaza has been destroyed. Mountains of rubble need to be removed. Who pays for that? Homes must be rebuild for Palestinians. Hospitals rebuilt. Schools reestablished. Mosques and Church restored, that is, if Palestinians are allowed to live there. I can think of, nor have I heard of, no country stepping forward to offer to rebuild a Palestinian Gaza. Israel won’t. America will only pay to rebuild Gaza if it can turn it into a Mediterranean resort for the wealthy.

If the Palestinians leave the area Israel might fund reconstruction but it would not be reconstruction of Palestinian land but construction of greater Israel. The Palestinians cannot afford to rebuild and if Iran offered to it would be seen as hostile terrorist interference. If there are countries willing to rebuild Gaza, maybe Spain or Ireland, it would only be under absolute scrutiny of Israel who still have a siege on Gaza and haven’t let in things such a building supplies for a long time already.

The only weak spot I see in the rebuff of Palestine is the change in public attitudes toward Israel – and therefore the west in general. The fact that the U.K. has to arrest writers and activists who oppose genocide, and that that hasn’t stopped them, the crackdown in the U.S. of anti-genocide students, means there is an opinion on Israel that the west is trying to stifle. A. 2025 Washington Post poll found that 61% of surveyed Jewish Americans believe Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza. Let’s hope that vision of Israel lasts.

Because we know what will happen. Twenty years from now western politicians will admit it was genocide and express regret that they didn’t stop it but oh, well, that’s in the past now. There’s nothing anyone can do. Greater Israel has established itself and it would be wrong to change boundaries now. There will be American books written about how this was a genocide and a dark stain on American foreign policy. But the important thing is that no-one (country or leader) will do anything. Eventually it will be forgotten as just the way things are now. An ethnically cleansed Palestine as part of greater Israel will just be the new reality we have to live with.

If we are still hostile to Iran because they support terrorists what do we say about our supporting genocide? We don’t criticize Israel because their interests and ours get along. We threaten Iran because their national interests are at odds with our national interests. National interest as determined by somebody.That’s all you need to know. Human rights violations, sanctions, support, threats and protection are about nothing more than who aligns their interest with ours.

Venezuela is currently standing in the way of our interests by nationalizing their oil. Their interests are different from our interests. That’s the game. A game of interests and allies and spheres of influence. You might as well get used to the truth that no war is ever about what they say it is about. Think how many times have we gone to war to spread freedom and democracy and how much did it spread? Regime change wars have almost always left the changed country worse off (chaos in Libya, the Taliban in Afghanistan, military dictatorships in Central America, the Shah in Iran).

It’s hard to get the world the way you want it. People don’t always cooperate. Sometimes they have different national interests. They may want different things than you do. That’s why it’s important to be able to pound them into the dust.

.

Is the genocide over yet?

Donald Trump says it is and it’s not like he’s ever lied to us before.

Israeli has killed around 242 Palestinians since the ceasefire came into effect and injured 622. It may be more by now. I believe three Israeli soldiers have died. But the point of killing Palestinians is to get their land and Israel holds 58% of Gaza behind the yellow line everyone keeps talking about. The reason everyone is talking about the yellow line is that Israelis kill any Palestinian who approaches it.

I’ve seen articles about the genocide in Sudan coming up on my feed so that must mean the genocide in Gaza is over. That’s a relief. Now all we have to do is deal with the destruction of the buildings and the orphaning of children, the widows and widowers, the starvation, the destruction of Palestinian society through bombing hospitals and universities and schools and churches and mosques. The loss of hospital equipment deliberately destroyed, paper records burnt up, and the fact that Israel took 58% of the territory for itself, to deal with. I imagine the U.S., the U.K., Germany and Canada are going to come forward with plans to fund the rebuilding of homes in Gaza the same way they were able to get food to starving Palestinians. By not doing it at all.

The ceasefire came just in time for the U.S. to reposition itself from war with Iran to war with Venezuela. A good reason to end a war is because you want to start a new one.

Saudi Arabia has massive oil reserves and is a dictatorship. It also has nationalized it oil. Venezuela has massive oil reserves and is a dictatorship. It also has nationalized its oil. Want to guess which one gets regime changed?

Saudi Arabia does business with the U.S. It has a right wing (it’s a monarchy) pro-capitalist nature and never criticizes American policy. Venezuela is left wing, anti-capitalist, and does not play well with the U.S You can bet the first thing an American-backed leader in Caracas will do is privatize. Open for business. Our oil companies need access.

The west has no problem with dictators who do business (politics as well as money) with them (Egypt, Saudi Arabia) because its not about democracy or human rights. It’s about money and power. If Venezuela opened its markets and privatized and became a client state even under the currant government things would be different

I suppose I shouldn’t be so cynical. It’s not like they’ve threatened to invade here (Canada) yet. Right?