To all of you I wish a happy, peaceful and healthy 2025.

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The ending year has been a displeasing one.

Health wise it was the worst year I have ever had. For nearly half of it I was not able to work as much as I like. Even now, as I am recuperating, the challenge remains.

More disturbing for me though was the total breakdown of 'western' concepts that were, until recently, held high.

Liberalism, as an economic and societal concept, has broken down.

Globalism is no more. Free trade has been replaced with a myriad of tariffs and sanctions. The U.S. is forcefully pressuring its 'allies', especially in Europe, to buy its goods and to do its bidding. There is, astonishingly, no noticeable resistance to this.

The fake concept of 'fighting disinformation' is being used to implement outright censorship. Political activism gets threatened whenever it challenges the current Staatsräson as decreed from the top. Insulting politicians for their lack of consistency is now lèse-majesté that needs to be punished. Making fact based arguments is no longer seen as sensible reasoning but as taking partisan sides.

Most horrifying though is the breakdown of humanitarian concepts the 'west' once claimed to hold high. Mearsheimer says it best when he decries the the moral bankruptcy of the West:

Given the West’s presumed commitment to human rights and especially to preventing genocide, one would have expected countries like the United States, Britain, and Germany, to have stopped the Israeli genocide in its tracks.

Instead, the governments in those three countries, especially the United States, have supported Israel’s unimaginable behavior in Gaza at every turn. Indeed, those three countries are complicit in this genocide.

Moreover, almost all of the many human rights advocates in those countries, and in the West more generally, have stayed silent while Israel executed its genocide. The mainstream media has made hardly any effort to expose and challenge what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Indeed some key outlets have staunchly supported Israel’s actions.

One wonders what people in the West who have either supported Israel’s genocide or remained silent tell themselves to justify their behavior and sleep at night.

All the above already had started some time ago. But it culminated in 2024 in ways that were more noticeable than ever.

The mask is off. The 'West', as we knew it, is done with.

Currently my best hope for 2025 and beyond is for a more sane East to arise.

He meant well.

Probably.

But that is still the better than anything one can say about other former, current and incoming U.S. presidents.

• Jimmy Carter: A Declassified Obituary – National Security Archive
• The Untold Story of Carter's Fateful Foreign Policy – James W. Carden / American Conservative
• Jimmy Carter: the False Savoir – Michael K. Smith / Counterpunch

Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:

Well, I was busy doing the Christmas rounds. There weren't any posts.

Other issues:

Empire:

• The Case for Dismantling the Rules-Based International Order – Glenn Diesen

• US homelessness up 18% as affordable housing remains out of reach for many people – AP
• Rand Paul 'Festivus' grievances: US millions for Ukraine TikTokers – Responsible Statecraft
• US agency focused on foreign disinformation shuts down – France24

Palestine:

• The Moral Bankruptcy of the West – John J. Mearsheimer
• A Christmas Message for Thom – Roger Waters
  Crystal clear brooks (music vid) – Roger Waters
• 'When You Leave Israel and Enter Gaza, You Are God' – IDF Soldiers Who Commit War Crimes (archived) – Haaretz
• Israel detains director of key north Gaza hospital as WHO condemns raids – Aljazeerah
• The BBC's Civil War Over Gaza – Owen Jones / Dropsite News

Eastern Europe:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-314

News & views related to the war in Palestine …

News & views related to the war in Ukraine …

News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine …

After some nice days with family I am finally back home.

The cooking went well:

The kids have grown and challenge me to adopt to their new tastes.

That task wasn't easy but I did managed to do it. They asked for seconds which were readily supplied.

What I did not adopt to were the viruses the kids were carrying. I was down with a flu of some kind – some chills and coughing. Much better today though. 

Postings here will resume in a short while.

News & views related to the war in Palestine …

News & views related to the war in Ukraine …

News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine …

Long before Christianity evolved, people on the northern half of the planet celebrated the winter solstice as the end of  the dark times and the coming of light. Roman Christianity moved the day on which it commemorates the birth of Jesus to the winter solstice. It added a layer to the meaning of the holiday.

Hope for a new beginning, needed as much today as ever. Hope that the walls of darkness will come down.

*Picture courtesy of the (no longer reachable) Bethlehem Association

Like every Christmas I am visiting my larger family and enjoy to cook for them. The kids have grown and challenge me to adopt to their new tastes. Their minds are still mostly untouched by the dark realities we usually discuss here. They are open for new insights and challenges. Their curiosity encourages us to be likewise open to new ideas.

I wish you all a contemplative, hope- and peaceful Christmas.

Bernhard

Dear readers,

I am off to visit family. Posting will be light – if any. The open threads will stay so and I will moderate them whenever I can.

Have some nice days …

b.

News & views related to the war in Palestine …

News & views related to the war in Ukraine …

Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:

• Dec 16 – South Korea – Impeached Coup President 'Aligned With Washington's Values'
  Related:
  – Saving Democracy? – New Left Review
  – Washington's Bad Bet on Yoon – Daniel Larison
  – South Korea’s impeached leader avoids investigators as court begins meeting to determine his fate – AP

• Dec 17 – Russia – Agree To Be Provoked Or Fall For Lucy's Football?
  Related:
  – The story of 152nd Jaeger Brigade – Military Land
  – Ukraine faces difficult decisions over acute shortage of frontline troops – Guardian
  – Five months on, Ukraine clings to Kursk amid doubts over operation (archived) – Washington Post

• Dec 19 – New Reports On Gaza
  Related:
  – ‘Tired of writing about dead kids’: why a US state department worker resigned over Israel-Gaza policy – Guardian
  – ‘Cruelty’: Pope doubles down on condemnation of Israeli attacks on Gaza – AlJazeerah
  – How Israel admits to blocking aid to Gaza without saying it – Responsible Statecraft
  – Israel accused of act of genocide over restriction of Gaza water supply – Guardian
  – The War in Gaza Is Far Worse Than You Thought – Reason

• Dec 21 – Insane Anti-Muslim Jihadist Terrorizes Christmas Market
  Related:
  – A matter of state: The politics of German anti-anti-Semitism – Wolfgang Streeck
  – "Pro-AfD" terror attack in Germany – Thomas Fazi
  The attack is likely to intensify calls for greater restrictions on free speech — and even for the AfD to be banned outright

Prof Francois Balloux @BallouxFrancois – 3:18 UTC · Dec 21, 2024

– The audience's down. We need a plot twist for this year's finale.
– A terror attack on a German Christmas market?
– Boooring …
– By a far right, Greater-Israel supporter, Saudi, atheist psychotherapist, mourning the demise of Germany's safety?
– A bit OTT, but it will do …

—
Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-305

Yesterday Elon Musk lauded the German right wing (but in my opinion not radical) AfD party as the only one "that can save Germany".

A few hours later a Saudi man, living in Germany, drove a car into a crowd attending a Christmas market in Magdeburg:

Germans on Saturday mourned both the victims and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people, including a small child, and wounding at least 200 others.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany since 2006, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.

The state governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll rose to five from a previous figure of two and that more than 200 people in total were injured.

Before details were known followers of the AfD and other famous anti-immigration politicians, jumped onto the case with tirades against Muslims and immigrants.

Cont. reading: Insane Anti-Muslim Jihadist Terrorizes Christmas Market

Mainstream seem to have largely stopped to report about Gaza. But the Zionist genocide of the people in Gaza continues. Haaretz continues to document how the Zionist forces on the ground do it:

'No Civilians. Everyone's a Terrorist': IDF Soldiers Expose Arbitrary Killings and Rampant Lawlessness in Gaza's Netzarim Corridor – (archived) – Haaretz
'Of 200 bodies, only 10 were confirmed as Hamas members': IDF soldiers who served in Gaza tell Haaretz that anyone who crosses an imaginary line in the contested Neztarim corridor is shot to death, with every Palestinian casualty counting as a terrorist – even if they were just a child

The Neztarim corridor is a line from the eastern border of Gaza to the ocean. The Zionist smashed all buildings in the are to separate norther Gaza from the south. Every day the soldiers who 'guard' the corridor are ordered to commit arbitrary murder:

The Netzarim corridor, a seven-kilometer-wide strip of land, stretches from near Kibbutz Be'eri to the Mediterranean coast. The IDF has emptied this area of Palestinian residents and demolished their homes to construct military roads and military positions.

While Palestinians are officially prohibited from entering, the reality is more severe than a simple exclusion zone. "It's military whitewashing," explains a senior officer in Division 252, who has served three reserve rotations in Gaza. "The division commander designated this area as a 'kill zone.' Anyone who enters is shot."

This in not the doing of rogue soldiers but military policy:

Cont. reading: New Reports On Gaza

News & views related to the war in Palestine …

News & views related to the war in Ukraine …