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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2023-323
Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:
Palestine:
Ukraine:
This WSJ journo is staying at interesting places –>
Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof – 18:09 UTC · Dec 30, 2023
By now, seven hotels where I stayed and four restaurants where I had eaten in Ukraine have been struck by Russian missiles. Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, Pokrovsk …
—
Other issues:
RIP:
2023:
Empire:
Europe:
Russia:
China:
> At the same time, as spending on China at the C.I.A. has doubled since the start of the Biden administration, the United States has sharply stepped up its spying on Chinese companies and their technological advances.
…
Though the U.S. intelligence community has long collected economic intelligence, gathering detailed information on commercial technological advances outside of defense companies was once the kind of espionage the United States avoided.
But information about China’s development of emerging technologies is now considered as important as divining its conventional military might or the machinations of its leaders. <
Use as open (not related to Ukraine and Palestine) thread …
@Roger | Jan 4 2024 23:41 utc | 209
[…] You want to be proud of these Europeans and admire their work. I see them as the logical precursors of the Nazi attempts at forging Germany’s own lebensraum with its ethnic cleansing and genocide (a repeat of what the Germans did in South West Africa), and the looting of gold, silver and other wealth. You cannot be proud of one and condemn the other, as Eurocentrism tries to do. They were like a plague circling the Earth, and it has taken six centuries for it to be abated and start to be pushed back. With the nations that resisted it being in the vanguard.
This is not “woke” history, it is a history not from the point of view of the victors and historians drawn from the idle rich. […]
That is exactly woke history and it is extremely dangerous, because, instead of trying to understand what actually happens, it pushes a narrative that has little to do with the actual facts. As a consequence, that “history” does not teach, but indoctrinates and those indoctrinated by it are not able to recognize the preconditions of historical events in the making and to act accordingly.
Conflating the Spanish conquest of America with Nazism is totally misleading, almost to the point of being ridiculous, if it were not dramatically dangerous.
The Spaniards were primarily moved by sheer economic interests, they did not intend to generally genocide the natives and when the depopulation of the Caribbeans hurted their economic interests, they brought in slaves from Africa, again moved by sheer economic interests; when their economic interests were better served by war, they made war, when their economic interests were better served by peace, they made peace.
The Nazis pursued genocide even when that was against their own economic and strategic interests. Also, they were not interested into assimilate the others, heck, many German Jews were totally assimilated, but that did not spare them.
Others could make deals with the Spaniards and even live among them, if accepting assimilation; others could not make deals with the Nazis, nor live among them, even if totally assimilated, looking absolutely like other Germans, and, on top of that, useful to the German nation.
This is an enormous difference and it helps explaining, among other things, why the Spanish Empire lasted centuries, while the Nazi rule a little more than a decade.
The implications are too numerous and complex to be analysed here, so let’s move on to another, different, but still fundamental point of woke history.
Another prominent factoid of woke history is the idea that “genocidal” practices were and are somewhat peculiar of European culture. Those fateful and destructive events are as little the results of cultural convinctions, as much the results of material power. The Mongols did every bad thing the Spaniards did (including spreading deadly diseases), because they could: one of the main differences between them is that the Mongol empire crumbled after a few decades, while the Spanish/Portuguese/etc. empires lasted centuries with totally different cultural consequences and historical evidence. As a matter of facts collective punishment, extermination and deportation were common practices of every civilization. The Chinese had this practice of castrating the rebels’ young sons (and executing the older ones) and enslaving their women, as they did after their victories in Ling Shauangwen or Miao rebellions. And oftentimes these actions were justified by some sort of perceived cultural or ethnic superiority, again, a common sentiment of basically all nations, great and small. If you think it is a bad sentiment, then you have to be thankful to European colonialism, which effectively diluted this idea in so many peoples around the world. But this does not mean that non-European peoples were less inclined to the use of violence, or more humble with their own system of belief: generally, they were simply less powerful.
As a matter of fact, this revisionist, edgy, woke-flavoured history has been wrong more often than not, and it has been counterproductive to the study of history itself. Just to keep discussing about Spaniards and Americas, there is this great myth pushed by “The Man-Eating Myth” and its followers. According to those scammers, all the stories about cannibalism in Central America were Spanish propaganda and for decades all popular science and a good share of “serious” science ridiculed those evil white men who fabricated and, then, believed all those horror stories about cannibalism. Then archeological evidence confirmed, after 30 years of woke lamentations, the practice of cannibalism in old Central America and, on top of that, exactly where the Spanish sources put the worst offenders, among the Xiximes. Between edgy historians and Jesuits, experience taught that it is usually the Jesuits who are the most right. And that is a testament to how poor is edgy/novel/woke/politically-motivated science.
Posted by: SG | Jan 5 2024 16:49 utc | 225
“…one could argue this is all due to the evil rapaciousness of the City, the British Empire or Whites in general..” Scorpion
Does anyone argue that “whites in general” were behind the Empire? Anyone who does deserves to be ignored. One might almost say the same about The City. the truth is that both formulations reflect the deepseated fear in our NATOist cultures of being caught employing marxist language. There is, among intellectuals, a sense that when one mentions the existence, in history of ‘classes’ with differing interests and varying degrees of power, one is making a very dangerous, perhaps, in career terms, fatal move.
Of course the enormous profits of imperialism tended to trickle down through society. In England, even today, I imagine, all manner of houses have trinkets and ornaments collected in India or Malaya. What we cannot see is the real effect that Empire had on lowering living standards for the metropolitan majority- the Nabobs returning to England in the Eighteenth Century were among the most ruthless enclosers, investing their ill gotten gains in capitalist extractive agriculture, in both Ireland and the UK. And insisting that the behaviour that they had got away with India should become familiar to the native peasantry. It was not just the wealth that trickled down but the attitudes of those who had got rich quickly.
Nor is there any doubt in my mind that the appalling depth of the gulf between ‘castes’ in India soon became integrated into British society: the difference between classes was rationalised into attitudes akin to racism. In fact there was a sort of dialectic in which race and class prejudices grew stronger as each reinforced the other- and the end result was the inability of soldiers to recognise in the inmates of camps fellow human beings.
While I completely agree with those who stress the piratical instincts and greed lying at the basis of the empires and believe that it is impossible to exaggerate the criminality of, for example, the Dutch, the Belgians, the French, the British, the settler colonials, it is a fatal error, of the Identity Politics kind, to attribute the system to members of one ‘race’ or another.
The Black slaves in Virginia were, it was noted, in material circumstances no worse off than agricultural labourers in Wiltshire, or sharecroppers in County Cork or the Hebrides. As the Empire waxed the British people, literally, waned: dying younger, eating less. By the 1920s there was something like four inches difference between the height of a Public School boy and his working class contemporary. The rich were becoming as apparently differentiated from the poor as member of one race from another. They spoke languages just as different as those Russians and Ukrainians and lived and died in very different circumstances and at very different ages.
As to those who blame “The City”; or the multitudes who attribute all evil doing to a handful of families descended from the financiers of past centuries, they are no different. They cannot bring themselves to talk of class, and a ruling class in a system in which the exploitation of labour is a key component, so they dance around that horrifying (and unAmerican) term, with anything that they can find. They know, and some of them like Larouche knew very well, that talking of class can be a crowd killer in a population that has been marinated, stewed and finally soused in the sauce of anti-communism. So, instead they blame the bumbling and ineffectual King Charles, or the fifth generation after John D Rockefeller made it unnecessary for any of his descendants ever to work again, or that family of scholars, scientists and bores bearing the Rothschild family name. Or the Jews. Or the Anglos.
Meanwhile, looming behind all this trivial provincial nattering, is the monstrosity of a vast world system of exploitations all of them dependent upon the primary exploitative system which not only exploits 99% of humanity for the benefit of a few but mesmerises them into kissing the hand that picks their pockets.
Posted by: bevin | Jan 5 2024 16:59 utc | 226
Re the AIPAC/Epstein Honey Trap/Blackmail operations & two most trusted institutions
Surely the western intel community could easily share damning evidence of ALL those involved in human trafficking if they wanted to. Why don’t they? Are they all spineless cowards & traitors, not only to their nations – but to humanity?
Could it be that the vast majority of those in power in the west are swimming in big pools of luxurious excrement, and are actually servants of a several centuries old ruling elite – who have more billions than they can keep track of, who not knowing any better, view it as their duty to continue as their ancestors did for centuries by perpetuating wars, corruption, poverty, & mass deception – in order to stay in power?
Do they use endless wars, corrupt politicians, & Big Lies to keep the people fearful, brainwashed, dumbed down, self-medicated, divided & conquered — with many struggling to survive -and most people too disturbed & distracted to notice the ones behind the scenes, the ruling elite – who ARE in control, who want things to be like that, so they can hold on to power over us?
Apparently, 2,000 years ago – at the beginning of the era ending now most people in the west could not read. We were much more like herds of dumb animals who needed shepherds to control us. The shepherds worked thru/under the authority of the church & state – who were apparently controlled from behind the scenes by the ruling elite. Now we can see that their old systems are no longer working, despite their desperate denials of reality.
The western ruling elite’s operations were surely much easier & simpler for their ancestors – back when 99+% of the people were unthinking illiterates, much more emotional, gullible, & herdlike, than now. Waaay back when most people were unable to share their thoughts, observations, & video recordings of current events instantly with people all over the world.
2) The West’s two most powerful & trusted institutions (church & state) are apparently the least trustworthy & most corrupt of all. They both stand on corrupt foundations of Big Lies. All structures, physical or not, built on corrupt foundations eventually collapse.
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In stark contrast to the methods of the western ruling elite – the leaders of China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela & other’s leaders are known to be perpetual students of philosophy, who value the ‘greater good’, integrity, truth, compassion, tolerance, justice, & diplomacy above all – and are therefore viewed as severe threats to the “National Security” of the ruling elite, whose most ranking servants are like a handpicked herd of creatures, apparently too ignorant, conceited, & power drunk to see the truth of the matter.
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What can be done to make things better? How can we build a new country/world?
New system:
Should we abolish the present political system & replace it with a new super transparent system – designed to prevent corruption, to constantly be improved?
Make the Accounts of All Agencies, Contractors, & Employees: 100% Transparent, so anyone can see all Correspondence, Accounts & Records, online anytime. Stiff prison sentences & asset confiscation as consequence of corruption.
Only high integrity people commited to serving the people will find that acceptable. It’s a way to end corruption… a way to shut down the mafia state!
Should the Roman Catholic Church get a Class Action Law Suit for removing Origin’s teachings on Reincarnation & Karma from the bible (553 AD), for killing millions of women (during the crusades)- effectively ending wholesome, gender balanced leadership in the west, & for telling many Big Lies, that have kept Christians in the dark for ~1400 years⁉ Apparently the Emporer Justinian realized that if the people knew about reincarnation/karma, that it would lead to a loss of government control. If people knew they had multiple lives they would not submit to the church/government & would have no fear of death.
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Force without wisdom falls of its own weight. Horace
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“We must drag the machinations of the powerful into the daylight for all to see… we must be unapologetic about that most basic need of humanity – the desire to know.” – Julian Assange, Jan 2014
PS to those who view the situation as hopeless, who think/say that things will never change — I say either: you have been brainwashed and are
exactly where the bastards want you to be – regardless of whose side you think you are on.
Posted by: Toby C | Jan 5 2024 17:53 utc | 229
Posted by: SG | Jan 5 2024 16:49 utc | 225
@Roger | Jan 4 2024 23:41 utc | 209
[…] You want to be proud of these Europeans and admire their work. I see them as the logical precursors of the Nazi attempts at forging Germany’s own lebensraum with its ethnic cleansing and genocide (a repeat of what the Germans did in South West Africa), and the looting of gold, silver and other wealth. You cannot be proud of one and condemn the other, as Eurocentrism tries to do. They were like a plague circling the Earth, and it has taken six centuries for it to be abated and start to be pushed back. With the nations that resisted it being in the vanguard.
This is not “woke” history, it is a history not from the point of view of the victors and historians drawn from the idle rich. […]
That is exactly woke history and it is extremely dangerous, because, instead of trying to understand what actually happens, it pushes a narrative that has little to do with the actual facts. As a consequence, that “history” does not teach, but indoctrinates and those indoctrinated by it are not able to recognize the preconditions of historical events in the making and to act accordingly.
This is a valuable discussion and thank you for engaging despite ostensible disagreements. All histories disagree with each other because all express partial points of view. But it is helpful to compare and consider such different perspectives.
The Spaniards were primarily moved by sheer economic interests, they did not intend to generally genocide the natives and when the depopulation of the Caribbeans hurted their economic interests, they brought in slaves from Africa, again moved by sheer economic interests; when their economic interests were better served by war, they made war, when their economic interests were better served by peace, they made peace.
Here I interject my favorite Admiral He and Maritime Ban thesis: once the world opened up after the former’s sharing of charts with full longitude and latitude, and once the latter Ban left a power vacuum in world maritime trade between Suez and Beijing, Western enterprises (probably from old Jewish trading houses) ‘discovered’ the Orient where they also learned that Europeans had absolutely nothing of value to sell to the more civilized and technologically advanced Indian and Chinese civilizations. However, once they found gold and silver (partly thanks to Colombus having one of those maps, though he was NOT the first in the 1400s) then they had something (money) to trade with in Asia. The more gold they got from the Americas, the more money they could make in Madrid, Lisbon, Amsterdam and London and, later, New York and San Francisco. (See Gunder Frank’s ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age)
The Mongols did every bad thing the Spaniards did (including spreading deadly diseases), because they could: one of the main differences between them is that the Mongol empire crumbled after a few decades, while the Spanish/Portuguese/etc. empires lasted centuries with totally different cultural consequences and historical evidence.
A book I read long ago disagrees about the ‘few decades’ in that Genghis’ prime motivation was to create international Law preventing War and divide-and-conquer exploitation such as his people endured under Chinese domination for centuries. Once a nation surrendered, a Khan was put in place and The Law put into effect and most of these nations kept that Law for several centuries, not a few decades, presumably because it was an effective system of Law and Governance. I just searched: http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/mongols-sup.htm . Supposedly lists the Rules of Law. Only 22 points, hmmm….
The Chinese had this practice of castrating the rebels’ young sons (and executing the older ones) and enslaving their women, as they did after their victories in Ling Shauangwen or Miao rebellions. And oftentimes these actions were justified by some sort of perceived cultural or ethnic superiority, again, a common sentiment of basically all nations, great and small. If you think it is a bad sentiment, then you have to be thankful to European colonialism, which effectively diluted this idea in so many peoples around the world.
Well said, especially about ‘all nations’ which is true, and you could add to the last sentence ‘and almost succeeded in stamping out the worldwide traffic in human slaves.’
That said, Tristam Shandy, the solo sailor, wrote of being press-ganged into the lower decks when still a boy. His was the last generation to whom that happened barely more than a century ago. What sort of social order countenanced such treatment? Where were individual rights? What was it like being a miner’s child forced to work underground twelve hours a day? Was this racism or classism or greed or? Whatever the causes we can name there was a worldview, a mindset, an over-arching cultural context fostering such behaviours which we now have a hard time understanding because we see through different eyes.
The human realm is plastic and wide-ranging. Plastic because there is so much continuous change and wide-ranging because there is no end of shared and individual heavens and hells we fashion together in this collective Dream called ‘Life’.
The problem with ‘woke’ history as you are describing it is that all history is story and all story reflects a particular perspective and no perspective includes all perspectives and thus all stories are partial. So we are left with doing what we can within the frame of our own particular level of learning and wisdom. For if nothing else, each human life is some sort of exercise in lifelong learning, indeed perhaps learning is all we ultimately do from cradle to grave.
Posted by: Scorpion | Jan 5 2024 18:21 utc | 230
COPIED over from the Ukraine thread —
@ canuck | Jan 5 2024 14:18 utc | 211
@ Refinnejenna | Jan 5 2024 11:35 utc | 189
What you are really saying above is that Japan invaded China simply because it was there. And for no other reason. iow Japan had nothing better to do at the time.
You might believe that ‘canuck’ and ‘Refinnejenna’, however ………… (I don’t repeat myself)
“Christianity” the same
“Japan wanted a seat at the same table as those powers.” It would really help matters if you paid attention to what I wrote before replying…………. (I don’t repeat myself)
But I will add in some more history.
First Sino-Japanese War, conflict between Japan and China in 1894–95 that marked the emergence of Japan as a major world power and demonstrated the weakness of the Chinese empire. The war grew out of conflict between the two countries for supremacy in Korea. Korea had long been China’s most important client state, but its strategic location opposite the Japanese islands and its natural resources of coal and iron attracted Japan’s interest. In 1875 Japan, which had begun to adopt Western technology, (Japan) forced Korea to open itself to foreign, especially Japanese, trade and to declare itself independent from China in its foreign relations.
Japan soon became identified with the more radical modernizing forces within the Korean government, while China continued to sponsor the conservative officials gathered around the royal family.
https://www.britannica.com/event/First-Sino-Japanese-War-1894-1895
There were serious conflicts between Japan and Korea from 1931 which eventually culminated in the 1937 invasions of China after Japan being repeated BLOCKED by US actions (Roosevelt since 1933) across the Pacific and Asia.
I little dose of history – Koreans saw themselves (and still do) as culturally, intellectually, historically and characteristically superior to the lower class less enlightened worker grade ‘rough heads’ of Japanese people. For centuries they had resented each other and had negative opinions about each other. Much like the Greeks and the Turks, or the Turks and the Armenians. 🙂
A little note for ‘canuck’ the Han Chinese empires were always MULTICULTURAL enterprises including inside the Palace. Even in the original Qin dynasty. 🙂
A study of the effect of the United States’ economic sanctions against Japan
must begin by analyzing the United States’ attitudes toward Japan’s expan-
sion in Asia. As early as 1905, when President Theodore Roosevelt brokered
the peace ending the Russo-Japanese War, the United States had [PARANOID self-interest] suspicions of
Japan’s intentions in the region.3 Roosevelt commissioned the development of a
strategy to curb potential Japanese expansionism [ SEE China US relations in the 21st century for comparisons]. Created by Admirals George
Dewey and Alfred Thayer Mahan, this strategy became known as [PARANOIA] War Plan
Orange and rested on the ability of the United States to economically isolate
the island nation before striking a decisive military blow.
While the 1920s saw
refreshing peace and cooperation between Japan and the Allied nations, rela-
tions became strained again as the [1930s] global Great Depression forced nations to
pursue isolationist, protectionist economic and foreign policy.4
Losing trading
partners thrust Japan into economic trouble, which then led to a domestic
resurgence of nationalism. Once again, Japan looked to [was forced to] conquer, and War Plan
Orange returned to relevance. According to historian Edward Miller, with the
Great War still fresh in every American’s mind, and perhaps with just a touch
of optimistic self-delusion, “the helplessness of Japan, if isolated economically
and financially, evolved into an axiom at a time when the U.S. government was
averse to fighting a war.”
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=thetean
Same as today with China – Paranoid Delusions projected onto China, coupled with more serious Delusions of Grandeur and racist superiority within America.
In the late nineteenth century, Japan’s economy began to grow and to industrialize rapidly. Because Japan has few natural resources, many of the burgeoning industries had to rely on imported raw materials, such as coal, iron ore or steel scrap, tin, copper, bauxite, rubber, and petroleum. Without access to such imports, many of which came from the United States or from European colonies in southeast Asia, Japan’s industrial economy would have ground to a halt. By engaging in international trade, however, the Japanese had built a moderately advanced industrial economy by 1941.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=1930
Note the term and concept of : Japan was Forced to …………….. (I won’t repeat myself further)
This kind of Historical Information is literally everywhere and accessible.
Simply because Japan eventually took kinetic actions to secure critically needed natural resources does not in itself substantiate American Paranoia when it was the very acts of America that forced Japan to act in it’s own self-interest.
It does not mean that America was always RIGHT – far from it – [because the USA] were actually the direct cause of Japan’s Rational Realist Response, in China, in Asia, and in Pearl Harbour.
(A rare perspective yet a true one. I am not saying Japan is innocent either, so please do not put words in my mouth. Cpaitalist Greed is Capitalist Greed and Selfishness no matter what Race is doing it. But no one Nation operates in a Vacuum either! See Russia. )
Similarly IF China does eventually use military force to reunite Taiwan with the mainland this does not me that America was either right or justified to FEAR such an action occurring in the future.
People who do NOT know their American and Asian History should be silent and ask people who do. (smiling)
Of course people have the right to believe whatever they want. Especially in Fantasyland America.
How America Got Divorced from Reality: The Chronology of Crazy in America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XirnEfkdQJM
Enjoy, it’s a great little summary of reality.
Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Jan 6 2024 0:26 utc | 237
Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Jan 6 2024 0:41 utc | 244
@Lavrov’s Dog | Jan 5 2024 22:49 utc | 240
It is not my (nor Roger’s) job to educate you or Scorpion better — and as I said I am not going to argue about this matter.
Then do not do it. Especially if you have to costantly answer me before trying to comprehend (from Latin comprehendere: “to put together”) what I wrote.
[…] you cannot presume in any cultural / social or empire breakup situations that “multiculturalism” is the CAUSE of the fracturing itself!
I never presumed in “any”. I said that it is a tendency, thus not a necessity (1). I said that authoritarian rule curbs these frictional forces (2). I said that inclusivity and diversity policies enhance these frictional forces (3), by highlighting and exposing the cultural differences. As a consequence, I said, multicultural societies are found either in authoritarian empires or in short lived polities, or in both authoritarian and short-lived polities (4).
Now let’s take the counter(???)-examples you put forward:
the Ottoman empire
A most authoritarian state.
the Roman [empire]
The “role-model” of an authoritarian state.
[the] Chinese empire
An authoritarian to most-authoritarian to ethnic-infighting-blob state.
Let’s take the Roman polity. The Roman Republic developed some democratic institutions: the plebeian council, the tribunes of the plebs, the plebeian aediles. The commoners (plebeians) during the Roman Republic had, through their two tribunes, complete veto power over the decisions of all magistrates, including the consuls, and of the Senate. As soon as the Republic morphed into an Empire, these democratic institutions completely vanished, aristocratic power waned and the Roman polity became autocratic as it never was. A good example indeed, for my thesis.
Also, the Roman Empire fractured along the Latin/Greek cultural border.
The Ottomans never even tried to be somewhat democratic. A repressive religious state, where one needed to be muslim to access (but not necessarily have) full civil rights. Socially regressive even if compared to the Roman Empire, even if 1000 years later. If one thinks that the Eastern Roman Empire developed the Corpus Iuris Civilis, and then, 1000 years later, there was sharia there.
Posted by: SG | Jan 6 2024 13:00 utc | 255
WTF?
Defense Secretary Kept White House in the Dark About His Hospitalization
Lloyd J. Austin III issued a statement Saturday night saying, “I take full responsibility for my decision about disclosure.”
Share full article
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, wearing a dark gray suit and blue tie, standing at a lectern with many colorful flags behind him.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III was admitted to intensive care on Monday. The White House learned of it on Thursday.Credit…Office of The Secretary of Defense Public Affairs/via Reuters
Helene CooperEric Schmitt
By Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt
Reporting from Washington
Jan. 6, 2024, 6:18 p.m. ET
It took the Pentagon three and a half days to inform the White House that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III had been hospitalized on New Year’s Day following complications from an elective procedure, two U.S. officials said Saturday.
The extraordinary breach of protocol — Mr. Austin is in charge of the country’s 1.4 million active-duty military at a time when the wars in Gaza and Ukraine have dominated the American national security landscape — has baffled officials across the government, including at the Pentagon.
Senior defense officials say Mr. Austin did not inform them until Thursday that he had been admitted to the intensive care unit at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. The Pentagon then informed the White House.
The Pentagon’s belated notification, first reported by Politico, confounded White House officials, one Biden administration official said. A spokeswoman for the National Security Council declined to comment on Saturday.
On Saturday night, Mr. Austin issued a mea culpa.
“I recognize I could have done a better job ensuring the public was appropriately informed,” he said in a statement. “I commit to doing better.”
Mr. Austin added, “This was my medical procedure, and I take full responsibility for my decision about disclosure.”
It was late Friday evening when Mr. Austin’s spokesman, Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, put out a statement to the news media that the secretary had been hospitalized. General Ryder said patient privacy prevented him from elaborating about Mr. Austin’s medical issue.
In the Friday statement, he said the defense secretary, who is 70, was “recovering well and is expecting to resume his full duties today.”
Mr. Austin was still in the hospital on Saturday, a defense official said.
Pentagon officials had to call Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks while she was on vacation in Puerto Rico to handle affairs while Mr. Austin was hospitalized, a Defense Department official said on Saturday, confirming a report by NBC News. The department said on Friday that Ms. Hicks had assumed Mr. Austin’s duties temporarily. The secretary has delegated authority to her in the past, when he has been on vacation and off the grid.
But just Thursday, while Mr. Austin was out of action, the United States launched a retaliatory strike in Baghdad that killed a militia leader who Pentagon officials said was responsible for recent attacks on American troops in the region.
A Biden administration official said that the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, already had authorization for the strike.
Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas and a member of the Armed Services Committee, demanded on Saturday that Mr. Austin explain why he had not immediately informed the White House that he had been hospitalized and was unable to perform his duties.
“The secretary of defense is the key link in the chain of command between the president and the uniformed military, including the nuclear chain of command, when the weightiest of decisions must be made in minutes,” Mr. Cotton said in a statement. “If this report is true, there must be consequences for this shocking breakdown.”
Criticism was growing in other quarters as well.
“The public has a right to know when U.S. cabinet members are hospitalized, under anesthesia or when duties are delegated as the result of any medical procedure,” the Pentagon Press Association said in a statement Friday night. “As the nation’s top defense leader, Secretary Austin has no claim to privacy in this situation.”
Mr. Austin is notoriously private and has kept a low profile during his time as defense secretary. It has been more than a year since he appeared at the lectern in the Pentagon briefing room to address members of the news media, and he has been known to sometimes avoid reporters who travel with him overseas.
On those trips, he prefers to dine alone in his hotel room when he does not have an engagement with a foreign counterpart.
In his statement Saturday, Mr. Austin said, “I am very glad to be on the mend and look forward to returning to the Pentagon soon.”
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent. More about Helene Cooper
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades. More about Eric Schmitt
Posted by: daffyDuct | Jan 7 2024 0:42 utc | 266
Dignified Sex Work and Temporary Marriages In Geopolitics – a working title ..
/// from the archives //////
U.S., Russia Cooperate on Iran Amid Rifts
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 8, 2006
The United States and Russia publicly closed ranks yesterday over the need for Iran to ease international concerns over its nuclear program, but growing fissures in the U.S.-Russian relationship were apparent when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with reporters yesterday after two days of meetings.
Though Lavrov said it was too early to discuss U.N. sanctions against Iran, Vice President Cheney had already issued a blunt threat that Iran will face “meaningful consequences” if it fails to cooperate with international efforts to curb its nuclear program. Cheney told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee yesterday that the United States “is keeping all options on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the regime” and is sending “a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
Over dinner Monday, Rice and Lavrov had a long discussion on Iran and U.S. concerns about the downward democratic trends in Russia, U.S. officials said. After Rice mentioned the dialogue to reporters, Lavrov responded that Russia has its own concerns as well, noting that the United States is the “only country” refusing to sign off on Russia’s admission to the World Trade Organization.
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President Bush also met with Lavrov yesterday, signifying the high stakes as the two countries try to chart a course in which their tactics and, sometimes, their goals appear to be in conflict. Lavrov, for instance, arrived in Washington after disrupting the U.S.-led international campaign to isolate the radical Islamic Resistance Movement, also known as Hamas, which unexpectedly won the Palestinian legislative elections. Lavrov had met with Hamas leaders and offered yesterday an upbeat appraisal of Hamas’s willingness to meet international conditions.
Russia has played a leading role in recent months to resolve the impasse with Iran, offering to establish a joint venture on Russian soil that would enrich uranium for use in Iranian reactors. Some U.S. officials were alarmed Monday that Russian officials appeared to be floating a plan that threatened to unravel the delicate diplomacy designed to bring the Iranian program to the U.N. Security Council for debate, a long-sought U.S. goal. U.S. officials rejected the idea, which would have allowed Iran to retain a small research facility.
Yesterday, Lavrov flatly said that there is “no compromise [or a] new Russian proposal” and that Russia is determined to clarify the nature of Iran’s nuclear programs and ensure it does not violate an international treaty prohibiting civilian technology from being diverted for military use.
Diplomats attending a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said, however, that Russia and China, two of Iran’s most important trading partners, advocate measures that could include allowing Tehran to continue some form of carefully monitored, small-scale research to enable it to save face amid international pressure.
“The United States has been very clear that enrichment and reprocessing on Iranian soil is not acceptable because of the proliferation risk,” Rice said, adding that Lavrov did not present a new proposal during their talks.
The IAEA board reported Iran to the U.N. Security Council last month, with the unusual provision that no action would be taken until the completion of an IAEA board meeting this week. But no further action needs to be taken for Iran’s nuclear program to be taken up by the Security Council.
Rice said that, as a first step, the United States will not seek sanctions against Iran. “We will see what is necessary to do in the Security Council,” she said. “There is still time, of course, for the Iranians to react.”
The United States and its European partners are initially seeking a statement, to be issued in the name of the Security Council president, that would affirm the resolutions issued by the IAEA and set a time limit for Iran’s compliance, U.S. and European officials said.
On Monday, when the IAEA opened its meeting in Vienna, Director General Mohamed ElBaradei expressed optimism that “an agreement could be reached” within a week to bring Iran into compliance with international demands. But, by yesterday, diplomats in Vienna seemed far less hopeful, with even European allies divided over how best to deal with Tehran.
The agency voted last month to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council over concerns about the possible military intentions of Iran’s nuclear program. Diplomats involved in the IAEA discussions said today’s scheduled debate on Iran will probably solidify differing opinions rather than produce an international consensus on how to persuade Tehran to cease its uranium enrichment program and provide more open access to its nuclear program.
The United States, France and Britain remain adamant that Iran should be allowed no latitude and must cease all uranium enrichment research, a condition that Iranian officials have said is unacceptable. Germany has been a key partner in the European Union negotiations with Iran, but some German officials have said the Russian idea of a small research facility has merit.
Lavrov’s visit comes against the backdrop of increasing concern in official Washington over the apparent rollback of democracy under President Vladimir Putin. Bush promised to promote democracy in his second inaugural speech, and senior administration officials are debating ways to make their displeasure about Putin’s actions known. The Council on Foreign Relations said, in a bipartisan task force report this week, that the administration should stop pretending that Russia is a genuine strategic partner and adopt a new policy of “selective cooperation” and “selective opposition” to Putin’s government.
Staff writers Molly Moore in Vienna and Peter Baker in Washington contributed to this report.
Posted by: robinthehood | Jan 7 2024 2:21 utc | 270
an informative article – a history of Gaza from antiquity to the present
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/why-gaza-matters
Why Gaza Matters
Jean-Pierre Filiu
January 1, 2024
After nearly three months of Israel’s war on Gaza, one thing is beyond dispute: the long-isolated territory has returned to the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For much of the past two decades, as Israel imposed an air, sea, and land blockade on Gaza, international leaders and bodies seemed to assume that the dense enclave of 2.3 million Palestinians could be indefinitely excluded from the regional equation. Catching Israel and much of the wider world completely off guard, Hamas’s October 7 attack exposed the enormous flaws in that assumption. Indeed, the war has now reset the entire Palestinian question, putting Gaza and its people squarely at the center of any future Israeli-Palestinian negotiation.
But Gaza’s sudden new prominence should hardly come as a surprise. Although little of it is remembered today, the territory’s 4,000-year history makes clear that the last 16 years were an anomaly; the Gaza Strip has almost always played a pivotal part in the region’s political dynamics, as well as its age-old struggles over religion and military power. Since the British Mandate period in the early twentieth century, the territory has also been at the heart of Palestinian nationalism.
Therefore, any attempt at rebuilding Gaza after such a devastating war will be unlikely to succeed if it does not take account of the territory’s strategic position in the region. The demilitarization of this enclave can be achieved only by lifting the disastrous siege and putting forward a positive vision for its economic development. Rather than trying to cut off the territory or isolate it politically, international powers must work together to allow Gaza to reclaim its historic role as a flourishing oasis and a thriving crossroads, connecting the Mediterranean with North Africa and the Levant. The United States and its allies must recognize that Gaza will need to have a central part in any lasting solution to the Palestinian struggle.
THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN
In stark contrast to its present-day reality of impoverishment, extreme water shortages, and unending human misery, the oasis of Gaza, or Wadi Ghazza, was celebrated for centuries for the lushness of its vegetation and the coolness of its shade. As important, however, was its strategic value, for Gaza connects Egypt to the Levant. Its advantageous position has meant that the land has been contested since the seventeenth century BC, when the Hyksos invaded the Nile Delta from Gaza, only to be later defeated and repelled by a Theban-based dynasty of pharaohs. Eventually, the pharaohs had to abandon Gaza to the Sea Peoples—known as Philistines—who in the twelfth century BC established a five-city federation that included Gaza and the now Israeli cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath.
Violent tensions erupted over access to the sea between the Philistines and the neighboring Jewish tribes and then kingdoms. Thus the biblical story of Samson, the legendary Israelite warrior who sets out to defeat the Philistines. As his formidable strength depends on his hair never being cut, he is rendered powerless when he falls under the spell of Delilah, who has his head shaved during his sleep, and winds up in a Gaza prison. While in captivity, however, his hair grows back, restoring his strength, and when he is finally dragged out of his cell to be ridiculed in a Philistine temple, he brings down the pillars of the building, killing himself along with his enemies. In a similar vein, it is after killing the Philistine Goliath that young David begins his effort to unify the kingdoms of Judah and Israel.
In later antiquity, Gaza’s coveted geography made it a crucial battleground between some of the epoch’s greatest hegemons. After passing through the hands of the Assyrians and the Babylonians, Gaza was captured by Cyrus the Great’s Persia in the mid-sixth century. But the real shock came two centuries later, in 332 BC, when Alexander the Great of Macedonia launched a devastating hundred-day siege of Gaza on his way to Egypt. During this gruesome war, both sides fortified their positions by digging numerous tunnels beneath Gaza’s loose soil—providing a historic antecedent to Hamas’s strategy against Israel today. In the end, Alexander’s forces came out on top, but at a high cost to all sides. Alexander was injured during the siege and took terrible revenge on the defeated Gazans: much of the male population was slaughtered and the women and children reduced to slavery.
But Gaza’s importance extended beyond its military value. Having become a city-state during the Hellenistic period, it later became a major religious center in the early centuries of first Christianity and then Islam. In 407 AD, Porphyry, the Christian bishop of Gaza, managed to impose a church on the ruins of Gaza’s main pagan temple to Zeus. Even more famous was another local saint, Hilarion (291–371), who founded an important monastic community in Gaza and whose tomb became a hugely popular pilgrimage site. One of the prophet Muhammad’s great-grandfathers was a merchant from Mecca named Hashem ibn Abd Manaf, who died in Gaza around 525. As a result, after the territory was conquered by Muslim armies in the seventh century, Muslims respectfully referred to it as “Hashem’s Gaza.” (In the nineteenth century, the Ottomans built the Hashem Mosque in Gaza City to mark the site of Hashem’s mausoleum.)
Between the medieval period and the nineteenth century, Gaza continued to serve as a coveted prize in the region’s major power struggles. It seesawed between Christian crusaders and Muslim defenders in the twelfth century and Mamluk generals and Mongol invaders in the thirteenth. During two and a half centuries under the Mamluks—Turkic rulers who controlled medieval Egypt and Syria—Gaza entered a kind of golden age. The territory was endowed with numerous mosques, libraries, and palaces, and it prospered from the renewed coastal trade routes. In 1387, a fortified caravanseray or khan, a kind of trading and market hub, was established at the southern end of Gaza and soon grew into a city of its own, Khan Yunis.
Gaza was absorbed by the Ottoman Empire in 1517 and conquered, briefly, by Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, after it invaded Egypt in 1798. For much of this span, Gaza was renowned for its fruitful climate, congenial natives, and high quality of life. In 1659, one French traveler described it as “a very cheerful and agreeable place”; two centuries later, another, the French writer Pierre Loti, marveled at its “vast fields of barley all clothed in green.”
When the border was drawn in 1906 to separate British-controlled Egypt from Ottoman Palestine, it ran through the city of Rafah to create a de facto free trade zone between the two empires. But during World War I, the border was fiercely contested by British and Ottoman forces; after three attempts, the British Army finally broke through Ottoman lines in 1917. General Edmund Allenby entered the devastated city of Gaza on November 9, the same day his government made public the Balfour Declaration and its commitment to “the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.” This endorsement of the Zionist program was later incorporated into the mandate that the League of Nations granted Britain to administer Palestine.
Although Gaza was one of the areas of Palestine least targeted by Zionist settlement, it became a stronghold of Palestinian nationalism, especially during the Great Arab Revolt of 1936–39, in which Palestinian Arabs rose up against the British and fought unsuccessfully for an independent Arab state. Instead, in November 1947, the United Nations endorsed a partition plan in which Palestine would be divided between an Arab state and a Jewish one—the original two-state solution—with Gaza joining the Arab state.
SEEDS OF STRUGGLE
Crucially, what became known as the Gaza Strip was shaped by the pivotal traumas of 1948. First came the failure of the UN’s partition plan, which, although welcomed by the Zionist leadership, was flatly rejected by Palestinian nationalists and the Arab states, setting off an armed conflict between Jews and Arabs. Soon, the first waves of Arab refugees, mainly from the Jaffa area, were arriving in Gaza; in a bitter anticipation of today’s international dilemma, the British suggested that the area would have better access to humanitarian relief overland from Cairo. Then, following the Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion’s proclamation of the state of Israel in May 1948, neighboring Arab states attacked, with 10,000 Egyptian soldiers moving into Gaza. But the Egyptians never made it farther than Ashdod, some 20 miles north of Gaza, where they were soon pushed back by a daring Israeli operation.
By January 1949, the Israelis had not only defeated the Arab armies but also driven some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, in what became known as the nakba, or catastrophe. The armistice signed between Israel and Egypt under UN auspices in February of that year created the Gaza Strip, a territory under Egyptian administration and defined by the cease-fire lines in the north and east and by the 1906 border with Egypt in the south. After centuries as a strategic crossroads and vital commercial hub for regional trade, Gaza had been reduced to a “strip” of land, cornered by the desert, and cut off from what had been Palestine. On top of that, the local population of some 80,000 was now overwhelmed by some 200,000 refugees from all over Palestine who then described the Gaza Strip as their “Noah’s ark.”
There was no infrastructure to welcome these refugees, and during the first winter of 1948–49, the International Committee of the Red Cross estimated that ten children died every day from cold, hunger, or disease. The immensity of the Sinai Desert forced the survivors to remain in the enclave. Indeed, 25 percent of the Arab population of British Mandate Palestine was now confined in the Gaza Strip to just one percent of its former territory, with Israel absorbing 77 percent of that territory and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan another 22 percent, through its annexation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Such was the magnitude of the nakba that the United Nations created a special body, the UN Relief for Palestinian Refugees (UNRPR), to deal with the humanitarian crisis. For Palestinians, the terrible upheaval also planted the seeds of a new struggle that would continue to the present day. In December 1948, the same UN General Assembly that had approved the failed partition plan a year earlier enshrined the Palestinian refugees’ “right of return”—whether by way of actual repatriation or mere monetary compensation—a concept that has been central to Palestinian aspirations ever since. It had special meaning in Gaza, given the extraordinary number of refugees there, and since Egypt had no territorial claim on the strip, the enclave became a natural incubator for Palestinian nationalism.
As Israel’s first leader, Ben-Gurion understood the long-term threat Gaza posed before almost any of his fellow Israelis. At the UN peace conference in Lausanne, in 1949, he proposed annexing the Gaza Strip and allowing 100,000 Palestinian refugees into their former homes in Israel. But the plan generated an uproar in both Israel, where there was enormous opposition to any return of Palestinians, and Egypt, where the defense of Gaza had become a national cause. As a result, the UN admitted its impotence to settle the Arab-Israeli dispute, terminating the Lausanne conference and establishing open-ended “interim” institutions instead. Thus, the UNRPR was turned into the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which ever since has been the main employer and main provider of social services in Gaza. Eight refugee camps were founded in the enclave, the largest ones being Jabalya, in the far north, and the Beach Camp, on the shoreline of Gaza City—the same camps that have now been destroyed by the Israeli onslaught.
In fact, it took some years before Gazan refugees turned to militant activism. At first, both Israel and Egypt managed to tamp down on the so-called fedayeen—guerrilla fighters mainly drawn from the camps in Gaza who sought to infiltrate Israel. But by the mid-1950s, the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser began using them for proxy raids against Israel, thus beginning the cycle of attacks and reprisals that is so closely associated with the territory today. In April 1956, the security officer of a kibbutz close to the Palestinian enclave was killed by infiltrators from Gaza, causing Moshe Dayan, the Israeli chief of staff, to warn Israelis of the unresolved grievances simmering in the territory: “Let us not, today, cast the blame on the murderers,” Dayan said. “For eight years now, they have sat in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have turned their lands and villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our home.”
Eradicating the fedayeen presence from Gaza became a top priority for Ben-Gurion and Dayan. In November 1956, the Israeli army took control of the strip as part of a coordinated offensive with France and the United Kingdom against Nasser’s Egypt. During four months of occupation, around a thousand Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces (including two massacres documented by UNRWA in which at least 275 were executed in Khan Yunis and 111 in Rafah). The trauma was so profound that when the Israelis withdrew under U.S. pressure, the Palestinian population called for the return of Egyptian rule instead of the UN trusteeship that had initially been envisioned. A historic opportunity to build a Palestinian entity that could evolve into a state had been lost. Meanwhile, the fedayeen fled to Kuwait, where they founded, in 1959, the Palestinian Liberation Movement, known as Fatah, with Yasser Arafat as its leader.
Israel’s second occupation of Gaza started in June 1967, after the Israeli triumph in the Six-Day War. Dayan, now minister of defense, with the future prime minister Yitzhak Rabin as his chief of staff, erased any trace of the border between Gaza and Israel, betting that the attraction of the Israeli labor market would dissolve Palestinian nationalism. But the local population nonetheless supported for four years a low-intensity guerrilla war, until Ariel Sharon, the Israeli commander for the region (also later prime minister), bulldozed parts of the refugee camps and broke the back of the insurgency. Today, the Israeli army is using the very same map that Sharon did to distinguish the so-called “safe areas” from the combat zones in the ongoing offensive.
MAKING A MONSTER
Israel’s more visionary leaders had long recognized that the Gaza refugee problem would not go away. In 1974—following Ben-Gurion—Sharon proposed resettling tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Israel to address Palestinian grievances, at least symbolically. But once again, the idea was rejected. Instead, Israel started to play off the Muslim Brothers in Gaza, led by Sheikh Yassin, against the now Fatah-controlled nationalists of the mainstream Palestinian Liberation Organization. Notably, the Israeli military governor attended the inauguration of Yassin’s mosque in Gaza in 1973, and six years later, Israel allowed the Islamists to receive foreign funds while repressing any established connection with the PLO.
For a time, this divide-and-conquer policy seemed to work well for Israel in Gaza, with clashes flaring between nationalists and Islamists in 1980. But by the late 1980s, an entire generation had grown up under the constant pressure of the Israeli settlers who, though numbering only in the low thousands, led the occupying army to exclude the already cramped Gazan population from one-fourth of the enclave. It was in Gaza’s Jabalya refugee camp that the first intifada began, in December 1987, from which it soon spread to the whole strip and then to the West Bank. Young Palestinians defied the Israeli military with their stones and slingshots but also forced Arafat and the PLO to endorse the two-state solution. In response, Yassin transformed his organization into Hamas (an acronym for the “Movement for Islamic Resistance”) accusing the PLO of having betrayed the “holy” duty to “liberate Palestine.” Once again, Israeli intelligence played on those tensions to weaken the intifada and waited until May 1989 to imprison Yassin. But the popular uprising went on until support for peace in Israel brought Rabin to office as prime minister, in July 1992.
In opening secret talks with the PLO, Rabin’s priority was to disengage Israel from the Gaza Strip yet still protect the Israeli settlers there. The Oslo accords, signed in September 1993, created a Palestinian Authority to take charge of territories evacuated by Israel. Arafat moved into Gaza ten months later, believing he had himself liberated the territory, or at least the portion under Palestinian control, while the local population was convinced it had paid the hardest price for such a liberation. This misunderstanding, along with the rampant corruption of the PA, played directly into the hands of Hamas. In 1997, a botched Israeli intelligence operation against the Hamas leader Khalid Meshal in Jordan led to the arrest of Israeli agents. To secure their release, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to hand over Yassin, who had been serving a life sentence in Israel and who returned triumphantly to Gaza.
Hamas’s growing aggressiveness and the crisis of the peace process led to the eruption of the second intifada in September 2000. The shocking wave of suicide attacks helped bring Sharon to power in a February 2001 landslide. After laying siege to Arafat in Ramallah and killing Yassin in Gaza, Sharon believed that his victory would be complete only after the Israeli evacuation of the Gaza Strip. Such a unilateral withdrawal was meant to secure a new Israeli defense line around the enclave and was carried out without any consultation with Mahmoud Abbas, who had succeeded Arafat as head of the PLO and the PA. But Sharon’s gamble ruined the ambitious $3 billion development plan for Gaza that James Wolfensohn, the special envoy of the Quartet for the Middle East (Russia, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations) had designed.
Hamas naturally claimed the Israeli withdrawal as a victory and went on to win the internationally sponsored parliamentary elections a few months later, in January 2006. Embarrassed by the unforeseen outcome, the United States and the European Union decided to boycott Hamas until it recognized Israel and renounced violence. But by the following year, the unreformed Hamas, having killed hundreds of its rivals, had gained total control of the strip, which was then put under full Israeli blockade (with the cooperation of Egypt, which controls the Rafah crossing point in the south). In many ways, Israeli policies had brought Hamas to power in Gaza, a power that the blockade has only consolidated since then.
…
Posted by: robinthehood | Jan 7 2024 4:05 utc | 275
Posted by: Scorpion | Jan 7 2024 2:43 utc | 272
——————
Israel’s Expertise in Pacifying the Palestinians Is in High Demand by Capitalist Elites as Populations Around the World Grow Restive
BS !
Lets take the three amigos, India, Indonesia, USAss, worst genociders of the 20C
India genocided millions within/without its border, …Kashmir, Seven sisters, Punjab, Dalits, Naxals, , GUjarat……
Ditto Indonesia, E Timor, Aceh, West PNG, cHINESE minorities…
These two dont need no expertise from Tel Aviv , they might teach the Israelis a thing or two !
As for that 1200lb gorilla,
USAss genocided 30M civies since WW2, killed 3000 own cigtizens in 2001.
Its iN A LEAgue of its own.
Somebody says THE IDF is the first army to ‘target civies’.
Sorry
USA clinched that honor long ago.
Pioneer of 21C art of war..
‘Dry the pond to kill the fish’ in NAM
Artillery crew zeroing in on the cry of babies…in NAM
Babies killers
In fact its in their official rule of engagment…[sic]
In Fallujah,
punishing the “citizenry” to deny sanctuary and assistance to the insurgents,
In ex Yugo ,
‘
punishing the serbs to trigger an uprising’
A Serb American ask gen Michael Short..
Was it your son whose bombs hit a bridge in central Serbia crowded with traffic and pedestrians on a Sunday afternoon, where 17 people were wounded and nine people died, including “a priest with his head blasted away?” (Reuters, 30 May).
Or was it your son who, four minutes after the initial attack, hit the bridge again just as help arrived for the surviving victims?
Gen Michael Short explained to reporter…
“If you wake up in the morning and you have no power to your house and no gas to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be lying in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, ‘Hey, Slobo, what’s this all about? How much more of this do we have to withstand?'”
In Afpak, elsewhere, same rule applies
just get the bastards, fuck the civies
On October 22, US warplanes attacked the remote Afghan farming village of Chowkar-Karez, 60 kilometers north of Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold. The Taliban says between 90 and 100 civilians were killed.
The Pentagon acknowledges civilians were killed, but says the Taliban’s estimates are too high.
Asked why a sortie had been flown against a remote farming village, the Pentagon told CNN that Chowkar-Karez was a fully legitimate target because it is a nest of Taliban and Al Qaeda sympathizers.
According to the Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail, a Pentagon official told CNN that, “The people there are dead because we wanted them dead.”
No accident, no blunder.
Britain’s Chief of Defense Staff, Admiral Michael Boyce, told reporters
the war on Afghanistan is aimed at ratcheting up civilian misery in hopes that Afghans will oust the Taliban. “The squeeze will carry on until the people of the country themselves recognize that this is going to go on until they get the leadership changed,”
See how these sob broadcast their plan to genocide civies in broad daylight, with not a peep from the plebs, nor the ‘international community’, nor the pop
Hell we gave world Dickens too !
Well take your Dickens and shove it up yours !
[courtesy Stephen Gowans]
Posted by: denk | Jan 8 2024 3:52 utc | 284
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