Hey! Look at Me! Look at Me!

Somebody once asked a rocker (it might have been Keith Richards) what message he thought rock and rollers were trying to get across: he said it was, "Hey everybody, look at me!" That seems to be a common thing in the world ,too. There are a couple of countries that seem to be unable to stand being ignored. North Korea is one, South Korea is another. Gaddafi was good at it, and America, because of its importance, has not yet really been tried since its early days, which then had some promise. One of the best 'crier' is gallant little Israel.

Maybe it's because the 'threat' never really goes away. Maybe it's because it has been a nation-in-arms for the past 60 years. Maybe it's because it has kicked the tripe out of every one of its neighbours, some of them twice or three times, in that 60 years, or maybe it's just because the cash might stop coming if the crying stopped. But Israel makes a lot more noise about 'needing' than many other places far worse off, or with far greater needs.

Israel started advertising itself as the place that 'made the desert bloom' back in the fifties and although they've turned the place into an Arizona look-alike since then, it's probably had as much to do with having tremendous financial resources available, almost from the very beginning, than it's had to do with hard work. For, since the first Zionists arrived, they've been hiring the locals as day labor. It's not much different to-day. For a lot of Jews in Israel, the 'job' is just being Jewish, that aggrevates the non-religious Israelis who actually have to work for a living. When you look at what Israel actually exports to the world you find that, for all its modernity, it doesn't actually produce much at all.  But you wouldn't think so from looking at  google world. Israel is a lush green colour surrounded by dun-coloured neighbours. How could this be possible, with only a little help from friends and an 'edge' on the local resources.

Considering it has no oil production of its own and one of the highest ratios of citizens to automobiles on earth, and an active military, you have to wonder why you never hear Israel moaning about gas or oil shortages. If there is anywhere on earth that should have them, given the hostile neighborhood, it's Israel. But Israel never seems to have to scrimp at home while running a war anywhere else. Why is that? Well it could be because Israel, by some strange twist of kismet, got itself located at the end of an oil pipline from Jordan to the sea that exports mainly Iraqi oil, for Jordan has precious little of its own, either. For all their wanting to 'destroy' Israel, its oil rich Arab neighbours don't feel any constraints about oiling its war machine. Strikes me that, if they were as serious as the Israelis say they are, that tap would have been offed long ago.

Egypt controls the Suez but the thought of making Israeli shipping take the long way from Ashkelon to Eilat doesn't seem to have occurred to them. Even lately, the Egyptians were letting Israeli subs through their canal while the Israelis were whinging about a glorified Iranian tugboat being allowed through for the first time since the Ayetolleh was Homeini. Once again one would have thought, that, to 'strangle' Israel wouldn't have been such a difficult thing to do. The Arabs may have navies, some quite powerful on paper, but it's the Israelis who range the eastern Med fending-off those 'existential threats'.

This week the blogdom of the Jewish world lit up with the news that a settler family had been 'massacred' in one of those west bank outposts. It was unremarkable in that every one that I read stated, without any doubt that the Arabs had done it, because 'that's what Arabs do'. And the other unremarkability was the bloodthirsty nature of the proposed 'price extraction'. This week Jewish blogdom is riven by arguments about whether, or not, the on-site photos of slashed parents and bloodied babies should have been used to illustrate the story. While the effect of such lurid details was debatable; whether  the Arabs might actually not be guilty occurred to only one or two Jewish commentators. Or whether the actions of the IDF and settlers in the nearest Arab village, or whether the extension of that particular settlement onto newly 'abandoned' Palestinian land (suitably named from the initials of the 5 dead)  were appropriate reactions to such a horror, were noted by very few bloggers and commentators. Those commentators  were, naturally, greeted with the 'meshuggeneh' reaction.

Without getting to deeply into what seems to be 'an on-going investigation', in this instant we have what an American in Iraq once described as "what happens when you  bring your kids to a battle". This particular family of settlers, the Fogels, were among those who had 'settled' in Gaza, and had then been removed by the IDF. Funded by the Israeli government they moved into a West Bank settlement on what was considered to be  'legitimately-appropriated' land. For some reason they left that established home to break ground in a new settlement near Hebron.  Since it was started, the settlement has been in a literal 'war' with its Arab neighbours.  People, on both sides, have been beaten and killed, the notion of 'extracting a price' from Palestinians in destroyed property started near here,  and numerous Palestinians have been arrested and jailed under a military administration that often fails to identify settlers involved in provocations or violence. The Fogels may have been raising their children 'well',  but that included a readiness, in that community, to meet Palestinan "violence" with even more violent Israeli offensive "defence".

Along with a general round-up of young males in the nearby Palestian village (two policemen were identified immediately as suspects), the Israeli police also rounded-up all the 'foreign workers' in the settlement itself. These settler camps, like many other places in the middle east,  make use of  the  cheap labor of Thais and Philippinos to build or tend to things the settlers apparently don't have time to do. Some commentators have posited that it was one of these workers who may have killed the Fogels. For an outsider to enter the 'front line' camp, and 'execute' the family of two otherwise healthy adults, (one an IDF officer) - missing two of their children at home (who may have slept through the mayhem) and a third who was out at a meeting - without raising any alarm and then exiting the village undisturbed,  just seems to verge too much on the miraculous.

Both sides in this sad story have their martyrs, and their martydoms. Neither is particularly conducive to peace or reconciliation. No one, especially children, should have to suffer for the sins of their parents, but that, once again sadly, is, often, life.  By the same token,  no one should be dispossessed of their homes for anyone else's previous or historic 'rights'. If  that were the universal case, there would be few places on earth that wouldn't be challenged by  'former' owners. I really don't think that Jews from anywhere, other than Palestine, have any 'right' to land there, particularly if it currently belongs to a Palestinian. They should, perhaps, have a right to buy, if a Palestinaian wants to sell, but there is a lot of 'buying more than was sold', or buying rights to property from someone who doesn't hold them, and then using the courts and the law to gain freehold after encouraging  the residents'  'abandonment' through intimidation and violence.

As things stand now, with Israel continuing to 'cry out' and be heard by Americans and their government, nothing fair or equitable can be expected. What the world will get is more violence, for those like the Fogels, who claim a 'divine right', have no place for any non-jew in "Eretz Yisroel". Their only solution is ethnic cleansing. The non-religious Jews might be more temperate, but many of them see that they're in the same boat with the others, that the best way to keep 'safe' is to keep on top of the Palestinians, to make sure they can't go anywhere, be anything or do much but labour for scraps, if they stay in, or even near, Israel. Which leaves Palestinans with no real choice other than to give up and hope for some change of heart, or to keep fighting, and breeding, in hope that either they drive Israelis to do them what the Germans did to their sires and become 'pariah' to their supporters, or until they outnumber their masters and  their masters have no choice but to change.

For all the crying, the world isn't helping by running to 'pick up the baby'. It's already been spoiled, so there is no easy 'cure'.

And the Leaks Go On

Wikileaks continues to get take the blame for the world’s problems.  This week the people of Tunisia decided to do something about the president, who has been continuously in office for the past 27 years  and his family who, apparently, have been looting the country. Wikileaks is apparently a major cause of the problem because it published American diplomatic mail that discussed their corruption. What a laugh!

Now mind you initial responses laid the ‘blame’ on social networking sites such as tweeter and facebook which, it is charged, allowed the protestors to ‘coordinate their action’.

It seems to me that the real problem was the President and his family, whose activities were very well-known to the Tunisians even if the Americans were not aware of it. You can’t be President of a country for a quarter of a century and just ‘go sour’. Not after you won an election that was billed as a ‘wonderful demonstration of democracy’ and that gave you an 87 percent majority only 7 months ago.

Did anybody hear any protests about a ‘stolen’ election in Tunisia? No? That’s because there weren’t any, until now. Now, all of a sudden, because they’re “concerned”, the west, led by America, is taking steps to ‘shape’ the outcome -  to see that the people get the kind of government they need. And that won’t be any  ' muslim theocracy', even if that’s what they want. Seems although Al Numnnuts the president-unelect may have been a thief, but he was a real ‘pal to freedom’. And the US doesn’t have enough of those in the middle east.

News that the Army is taking steps to ‘restore order’ and that the Prime Minister is preparing a slate of candidates will come as no surprise, as the Army will be affected by its main arms supplier and the prime minister, and the powers that be, will respond well to a few dollars wisely-invested.

Meanwhile there are protests in Egypt and Yemen. But you won’t hear any stated support for the people there, as the two respective presidents are long-time old  hands at ‘keeping the .lid’ on dissent and of course on ‘fighting terrorism’. Once again,  if Wikileaks hadn’t printed American commentary on some of their double-dealing, the people would have been content to have them choose their next leader. Someone wise and just,  not like the doofus Kim Dong Il is choosing to run North Korean. No Wikileaks embarrassing him,  and that’s why the people aren’t out in droves to protest. Right!

In all three of these, massive increases in the price of basic food stuffs may have played absolutely no part, although, in all three, the first thing done to head-off trouble was to announce continued government subsidies for food. Basic food prices around the world are spiking upward in as much as 100 percent hikes. Prices like that force an awful lot of people in the world to reduce their eating. Maybe some Americans, too.

Another little stew is boiling  in what may, one day, be Palestine, and again ‘leaks’ are at the root of the problem. This time Al Jezeera, the Arab media giant,  has leaked purportedly confidential documents relating to the peace negotiations with Israel. First reading of these indicates that the Palestinian delegation has discussed, and were prepared to move on, every ‘trigger’ issue for Palestinians - the right of return for refugees, Jerusalem, the Al Aqsa Mosque, the territory of the West Bank, Israeli Arabs, the independence of the Palestinian state, etc. Only problem was the Israelis said it ‘wasn’t enough’ to make a deal. Maybe, if Jazeera could have gotten the Israeli documents, the world could have gotten a look at their ‘concessions’ - but, given the rejection of the ‘greatest Jerusalem of all time’ in return for one small arab subdivision there, ‘concessions’ might not be the best descriptor to use. Needless to say, the news hasn’t been warm and fuzzy for the Palestinian authority ( FATAH)  who are ‘holding’ office until (they hope) Hamas gets un-elected, or wiped out.- preferably the latter. Al Jezeera is now 'seen' as the Arab equivalent of Wikileaks

It has to be very inconvenient that somebody would ‘blow the whistle’ on the world’s superpower while it’s doing its darnedest to save the rest of us from the horrors of fundamental religion and bridled capitalism. It has to be embarrassing to set yourself up as the epitome of everything good, right and holy and find yourself pilloried for back-stabbing and crooked-dealing. Lying and cheating, killing and plotting like the bad guys who hate our freedoms and who do that stuff so, apparently, openly,  while America prefers to do it, for good people everywhere, behind closed doors. It’s just downright shitty when the bad guys can ‘make you’ be worse than them. And what’s worst of all is that the ‘hero’,  Assange, is such a dishonest, pipsqueak, wannabe, low-life, sex pervert with a BO problem ... or at least that’s what the good guys are saying.

All the while there are some real repercussions coming from Wikileaks. Just after Christmas the US government mounted a campaign to isolate Wikileaks and Assange by closing its servers and pressuring American-based companies to disrupt its finances. This resulted on a number of hacker attacks on various American  and European organizations. The first outbreaks were highly published.  But, as in other wars, there has been a 'blackout' on the effects of these attacks, which have continued. To-day, for instance, there was a mass-action that saw what's left of Egypt's electronic infrastructure bombarded with a storm of  Wikilieaks 'cables' mass-faxed to that country's servers. And, to-day, 5 hackers jailed in England for such activities were released on bail.

If Wikileaks serves any useful purpose, in my opinion, it's to add to the number of ‘balls’ America gets to juggle at one time. The more problems it has, the less the likelihood that Americans can be conned into another attempt to start that Great American Century that Wolfowitz, Cheney, Perle and company still so earnestly desire. If there’s an Allah he’ll keep on letting them drop bits of junk into their own works.

New Strategies

The world is abuzz with new ways of doing things this week. The Afghan fiasco is being 'revolutionated' at a NATO meeting in London. That's almost as hopeful as the Israeli initiative to remind the world of what happens when you have a holocaust.

The latter first. In an unprecedented welter of PR breaking out in Europe, virtually every member of the Israeli cabinet had been assigned a different country and a speech to 'celebrate' World Holocaust Remembrance Day - January 27th. Netanyahu and company were on hand, everywhere, to remind the world that 'Holocausts for Jews' are still being planned in places like Teheran, and Gaza,and Syria, and Iraq and Singapore - wherever there's somebody who doesn't like a Jew.

Not hard to understand considering that Netanyahu and other Israelis might actually have relatives who escaped the Nazi death camps, or didn't. But there's a sin of omission here, actually a couple. The Holocaust happened to 6 million other people in those camps who weren't Jews, too. If  'planned killing' is the essential definition, then you might have to open the Holocaust to include the estimated 114 million civilians killed in WW2 - on all sides. Only a military mind could tell you they 'signed up for it by being there'. Another minor point is that the mythos built around this particular instant of inhumanity has tended to blur the fact that such undertakings aren't as much the anomaly as we'd like to think. Such occurrences have happened with pitiful frequency and regularity all around our world over the past century. One of the numerically greatest was that perpetrated in the Ukraine by the nascent Bolshevik government of the Soviet Union. It was an experiment in 'social engineering' that deliberately starved and displaced millions and it was the work of a 'new' form of government espoused by a large number of Jews ... the descendants of whom might well be living 'under Hamas rockets' in Israel to-day.

What is hard to grasp is that this 'Shoah' PR exercise is just that. It's a deliberate attempt to deflect the gaze of the world away from what Israel has been doing to the Arabs, by pointing a finger at what Germans did to their ancestors. There is a report on Israel's operation 'Cast Lead' in Gaza last year, that's making its way through the UN. For the first time Israelis stand accused of some of the same things that got the Nazis a bad name. They're pedaling like crazy to derail the process, and taking a chance to play the sympathy card is a no-brainer to the PR-minded Israelis. Unfortunately, like the chimneys of Auschwitz, the ruins of Gaza, and Lebanon and East Jerusalem give lie to claims of necessity, self-defense or 'protecting the race'.

The London meeting is thought by many to be a similar obfuscation exercise. Gordon Brown, it is claimed, is attempting to put a shine on a large turd - to make some sort of purse out of a pig's ear without taking a close look at the ear, or his part in breeding the porker of which it was a part . In like manner as declaring the ovens 'open for business' in Iran, NATO is rediscovering their original 'rehabilitation and reconstruction' mission, this after almost a decade of an American-inspired shooting, bombing,  time regression. This time they're buying into the 'good cop' side of a new American 'bad cop' surge. NATO has decided to be the talking end of a social services-welfare approach to converting the Taliban. They'll also be paying for it, as the US is tapped-out (but morally inclined to) supplying the concomitant bang-bang for the recalcitrant. Some see this as the 'get out of Dodge dodge'. When the strategy fails, it's NATO's fault. America's Army goes home, to invade somewhere else, later, honor-bright, undefeated - except by squeamish allies who tied one hand behind .... etc, etc.  NATO can assuage its conscience by claiming to have tried every approach.

Whatever the outcome, Afghanistan will continue to be a lesser 'self'  for a long time to come, the victim of western meddling, and, latterly, western military assault. History will be tarring the United Nations, along with NATO and America for their misguided planning and feathering them with their unprincipled actions for the next half-century.