Random Rant Thread

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Barack Obama talked shit about Russia, saying: "Immigrants aren't rushing to Moscow... The life expectancy of the Russian male is around 60 years old... The population is shrinking..."

Does the White House not care about this simple, ordinary process called "fact-checking".

I suppose it's just a statistical illusion that there seem to be millions of immigrants, from Central Asia, former USSR (including Ukraine, of course), working in that country.

The life expectancy of the Russian male is not around 60 years old, unless you think 66 is "around 60".  It plunged drastically during the good old days of Boris Yeltsin, supposedly a "reform" champion according to the West, but has recovered a lot since. 

The Russian population is not shrinking, largely thanks to, you know, the immigrants.

0/3. 

He also said, "Russia doesn't make things..." which is partially true.  Partially, because Russia is the second biggest arms manufacturer, only second to the US.  They make too many things in that department.

If I had to talk shit about Russia, I would talk about the oligarchy.  I would talk about the horrible inequality, the economic structure that reminds you of the worst days of European aristocracy.  But no, the White House wouldn't go there.  I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that the US is catching up with them on that.

And I also wonder if that has something to do with the fact that the horrible social structure was cemented not under Putin, but under Yeltsin.  The US totally looked the other way when Yeltsin blatantly rigged the election in 1996, so that their Chicago boys and economic "advisers" would be able to continue the lethal neoliberal experiment in the country.  Much of the Russian economy, the bad part, is in fact largely made-in-America in its origin.

Do you understand now why I stopped taking the US's righteous indignation/condemnation over Russia seriously a long time ago?

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I don't know if it's humiliating or inevitable that it takes an Englishman, of all people, to educate Americans as to why their country is becoming an aristocrat paradise.

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‘We could have taken Gaza in a week, but that wasn’t our mission,’ says senior IDF source
www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/We-could-have-taken-Gaza-in-a-week-but-that-wasnt-our-mission-says-senior-IDF-source-369954

Oh sure, you could've, you could've, Mr. IDF.  But you didn't, because you would've had to murder 100 times as many civilians to do that - an absolute public relation disaster.

You can almost hear the IDF guy grinding his teeth - "We are one of the best military forces in the world, Hamas - those cavemen! - are absolutely no match for us, we could destroy the entire organization any time, any time, any time..."

But they can't, because they would have to kill 100 times as many civilians to do that.  And here is the money quote:

“Had we been ordered to defeat Hamas, we would have done it. We would have drafted four divisions, evacuated the Gazan population from battlegrounds, conquered the area and scanned it thoroughly.”

The "Evacuation of the Jews to the East"...

I know bringing up the Nazis is usually not a good idea, but sometimes you just can't resist.  The Nazi officials discussed at Wannsee Conference precisely the definition of "evacuation", and the consensus that they reached was that when German troops shot thousands of Jewish people in Latvia to death, they "evacuated" the Jews.  That consensus became the fundamental basis of "the final solution to the Jewish problem in Europe".



Hamas is an urban guerrilla force operating in that tiny de facto concentration camp area called the Gaza Strip.  The whole idea of "evacuating" the Gazan population is total nonsense unless the word means what the Nazis meant.  It's logistically impossible, "easier said than done" on horse steroids.  How the hell would they neatly separate "civilians" from "Hamas"?  And even after that, "evacuate" them where?  The sea?

The IDF guy perfectly understands what he said right there is total bollocks.  He's only expressing his frustration over this damning fact - the fact that in this kind of warfare, in this age of PR, military glory is nearly impossible to attain, as a total "victory", which is only possible by committing a wholesale genocide, means a total public relation defeat.

In other words, the Great, Awesome IDF is practically useless, or even worse than that as all it is capable of doing is alienate much of the rest of the world.  The IDF guy's pathetic whining doesn't change that.  There are only political solutions, and Israel is the most reluctant party of all.  They want to take all the cake, and have been tap-dancing for years around the obvious question of what to do with all the Palestinians who actually live in the region.  Hell, some of the Israeli elites are now openly talking about "evacuating" the Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan. 

And THAT - that naked colonialism - is the fundamental problem.

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German neo-Nazis: We're pro-Israel, condemn anti-Semitism
www.haaretz.com/german-neo-nazis-we-re-pro-israel-condemn-anti-semitism-1.247193?v=F5F6F04FF57B5EB5177E264A9F5187F7

Now, I don't know if that website is a hoax or not.  But what's truly amazing is that this news has been treated as some sort of a "surprise", "shock" all over the internet.  I don't know where they have been for the last 20 years or so.

The majority of the neo-Nazi types graduated from the whole "Jews are the vermin, and should be exterminated" meme a long, long, long time ago.  Far-right Europeans almost unanimously support Israel - not because they love Jews, but because that's the natural, logical, strategic consequence of their ideology.  How would you treat Israel when your stance boils down to "Them Muslims are barbarians who pollute our living spaces, and the Muslim-loving leftist commies are the traitors"?

It's not rocket science.  Hell, Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik even went so far as to publish that long-ass "manifesto" so that all of us can look into how their minds work.  Do you think that he's just an isolated case, a lone loony who has little to do with the European far-right movement?  When he praised Israel as the brave soldiers on the front line defending the "European civilization" against the "horde of barbarians", he wasn't trying to sound "different" or edgy.  He was simply being a typical far-right European.  And that's exactly the argument that many of the Israelis use to justify their actions.  Michael Oren, the American-born former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, has just said that Israel is "fighting Hamas to defend the Western civilization".  If you think you are part of the "Western civilization" -  do you feel like thanking them for their "fight", or not?  That's your choice. 

Yes, Breivik was a tad extreme and crazy in his action, but his basic message isn't really different from the European far-right consensus, or from the semi-official Israeli view for that matter.

There is a clear line that connects right-wing Israelis, far-right Europeans, and the nuttiest evangelical Christians in the US.  If you want to join this wonderful Axis, go ahead.

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In fact, my first post in this thread, on this forum, was precisely about a Belgian episode of this phenomenon.

And my first (political) post in the previous thread was about the Russia-Georgia war, about which few in the world, other then neocons, cared back then.  But now we all know that it was a prelude to the ongoing mess in Ukraine.

Much of this thread ended up being devoted to the economic shenanigans in many parts of the world, but I guess the issues of Israel-Palestine and Russia always loom over it.

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"An envelope of Ebola" (Channel 2 poll in Israel):



Nice friends you got there, America.  Even racist to boot.

And no, Channel 2 is not some fringe network.  It's as mainstream as you could get.

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This is a great opportunity to illustrate how miserable you must be to be a politician.

The Clintons, for example.  They support Israel, and the current Netanyahu government is of course no exception to that general rule.  But they have so many reasons to hate Bibi Netanyahu that I don't even know where to start.

The most personal thing of all, therefore the thing that hurts the most, must be the fact that Netanyahu effectively threatened Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinski scandal.  That asshole even sat with Newt Gingrich and publicly mocked Hillary in a truly sexist-bully fashion.  That was nasty.  He always acted like a typical US Republican jerk, and still does.  In fact, few American Democrats like him, despite their long standing ovations to the very man when he visited US Congress.  Reportedly, when Sarkozy told Obama about his dislike of Netanyahu's personality, Obama said, "You talk to the guy, and think that's bad, huh?  I have to listen to that man every week."

Hell, Bill Clinton was right there when Netanyahu sabotaged the negotiation with Palestinians.  He even said that Netanyahu killed peace, and backpedaled frantically after that.  He knows who's the one to blame.

But the bottom line is, Hillary's biggest donor is Haim Saban, an Israeli-American billionaire.  He's someone who publicly said that his strategy to "protect Israel" was: make lots of donations to a political party; and influence the media outlets in the pro-Israel direction.  He says that he is a single-issue person, and that issue is Israel.  I suspect Saban hates Netanyahu as a person, too, but as they say, Bibi is "our asshole".

What's "great" about the Zionist donors is that so many of them are "single-issue" donors.  They don't demand a lot, unlike those other donors who always demand lots of ridiculous business pork to give the candidates a massive headache.  At the end of the day, Israel-Palestine is not terribly important for most of the politicians/candidates.  All you have to do to get the money is praise Israel in public and vote yea for the bill to send money to the country.  That's simply the easiest money that you can get right there if you stopped caring about the honest assessment of your own conscience.

The Zionist Jewish donors aren't powerful just because they are rich - the level of their dedication to the "single issue" Israel is simply unparalleled.  "I don't care much about what you will do in Washington D.C. EXCEPT about what you say about Israel" - that's music to the ears of the typical politician who has to deal with so many impossible demands from their supporters.

You have Sheldon Adelson (<-- one of the worst people that I've ever seen) and Paul Singer on the Republican side, and Haim Saban and others on the Democratic side.  Zionist donors everywhere.  That's the reality that compels Hillary to suck up to a man who publicly humiliated her in the most horrible way not so long ago.

It's a tough job, I'm telling ya.

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This is what the widow of former Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1996 by a right-wing youth when he was trying to accelerate the peace process with Palestinians, had to say about Netanyahu, back in 1998:

Rabin harbors a special bitterness for Netanyahu. She blames all of Israel's current problems -- whether it's the stalled peace process or Israel's backsliding economy -- on him.

"He is all political manipulation. He doesn't really believe in anything. I don't think he has any convictions other than staying in power," she said.

"Between what he says and the truth and the reality, there are the oceans. I hope he reads what I say."

Their feud is very much public.

Netanyahu recently wanted to place flowers at the memorial spot in Tel Aviv where the prime minister was murdered. She objected, and the official visit was eventually canceled. Netanyahu later gave a speech, asking how long she plans to blame him and half the nation for the murder.

"My answer is: As long as I live, I will accuse you -- and not half the nation. You and your leadership."

She banned Netanyahu from Rabin's funeral, but invited PLO leader Arafat and some other Palestinians.  That's how deep the hatred went.

You wouldn't have to be her to realize that Netanyahu and his gangs did incite the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, in their single-minded attempt to kill the entire peace process.  Don't get me wrong: that "peace process" was not even remotely fair to Palestinians.  That was a joke from "justice"'s point of view.  What I'm trying to say is that the people who currently rule Israeli politics have absolutely no reason to even think of any half-baked peace process, since they even rejected what Rabin was winning for Jewish Israelis, the maximum concessions from the Palestinian side.  They don't care.  They will continue to build illegal settlements.  They want all the land and gradually push all Palestinians out of the territory, period.  You are a fool if you think there is any space left for negotiations with those hardline fanatics.  "Two-state solution", my ass.  Don't insult my intelligence.  The true extremists with real power are not in Gaza, but in Knesset, and the cabinet.

"By 2000, there will be very little left to restore," she said...

...Though Rabin generally believes that American Jews shouldn't critique Israel's policies, she is ready to make an exception.

"In two years since my husband's murder, everything seems to be destroyed," she said.

"Here for the first time I feel that, yes, they are entitled to pass a judgment because Israel seems to be in very grave danger."

But of course, the "American Jews" kept looking the other way, and we all live in the consequences of that.

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Israel's brand has never tanked this spectacularly in its history as a country.  Almost every single American (not to mention European/Asian) I've talked to goes "What's wrong with that country, Israel..." despite all the stupid effort by the mainstream media and Bill Maher and whatever other apologists to "soften the edges" of the events, so to speak. One Jewish American friend, who had been an apolitical mild Zionist, has been converted to anti-Zionism, practically bowing down to me and saying that he was wrong.  We have scarcely talked about politics before, so it shocked me.

Maybe my samples are biased, but this is something new to me.  The only people still unequivocally defending their act seem to be Zionist Jews who never change their opinions anyway, the same way parents try to defend their children no matter what.  I understand their position, and in my book they are 100 times better than those AIPAC whores in Congress like that sorry excuse for a congressman named Cory Booker, but they seem unaware of the fact that they are losing friends and casual defenders very quickly.

On the other hand, Israelis have never been this pro-war, this right-wing.  I've already lost two Israeli "friends" over this.  No, I didn't have a fight with them.  I just listened to their opinions, and decided that it was way too uncomfortable for me to continue our communications.  That's how I got by in Israel - just stop paying attention to the people who say unpleasant things, and never confront them.  A coward option, yes, but I was a guest.

Anyway, there is a great disparity there.  The two peoples are going in the opposite directions.

Now I'm worried about Israel.  This seems so sudden to me.  Operation Cast Lede back in 2008-09 was almost as brutal as Operation Protective Edge, but didn't generate even a quarter of the outrage that this one has.  And most of the people who are upset over what's going on there don't know anything about the history of the conflict.  They think that all Palestinians support Hamas, and STILL find Israel's act unacceptable.  What if they learned that barely half of the Gazans voted for Hamas in the election?  What if they learned about the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin?  What if they learned about the rampant racism in Israel?  What if they learned the kind of genocidal stuff that many of the state rabbis in Israel have been saying and advocating over the last decade or two?  What if they learned all the facts, the way the right-wing Israelis kept reneging on the promises to antagonize and harden the other side almost deliberately?  I'm furious at the Netanyahu government largely because I know all the facts; they are upset even though they don't know a shit about any of that.

AIPAC and Zionist donors should work extra hard to keep Americans ignorant of these things.  Otherwise.

Netanyahu is the kind of an idiotic asshole who thinks of such a horrible result as his personal victory.  He's enjoying every moment of over-80% approval rate (I hope it won't free-fall after this!).  There's no cure for megalomaniacs like him.  The truth is that this is a horrible defeat in the long run, or not even in such a long run, not only for Israelis, but also for Jewish people all around the world, who will be unfairly associated with the evil and injustice in a faraway region.  No amount of political donations and strong-arming the media can't change that.  They have lost something that money can never buy back.

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Rania reported that US Senator Barbara Boxer, a 100% AIPAC tool, filibustered empty Senate for the single purpose of preventing CSPAN from covering the testimony of the Palestinian-American teen beaten up (to say the least) by Israel police.

Get that?  She filibustered EMPTY Senate to make sure Americans won't be able to see on TV what the Palestinian-American kid treated brutally by Israeli police has to say.  And this is not an Onion story, or a Saturday Night Live skit.

In Soviet Russia, the kid wouldn't have been invited for the testimony in the first place.  In Freedom America, the kid does get invited, but kept out of TV and public consciousness with a childish, shameless tactic like this.  Essentially the same result.

If you are American, just weep over how low your politicians sink on the moral scale to please their donors and supporters.  But don't worry - the politicians in other countries aren't much better.

But... sheesh.  I feel almost sorry for her.  I'd kill myself if I had to grovel that low.  Calling her a "whore" would be an insult to whores.

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Now, Israel and its supporters are trying to come up with all kinds of reasons to question the "civilian" death figure, like:

Hey, many of them are able-bodied young men/teens.  How do you know they had never taken up a gun and tried to shoot at Israeli soldiers?  And would you call someone who tries to shoot you if given a chance really a "civilian"?

The answer is: We don't know, but it doesn't matter; Yes, we'd have to.

You know, that argument is the famous "Srebrenica" defense that the Bosnian Serbs used to justify the massacre in Srebrenica and elsewhere (and the Japanese, to justify their mass killing in mainland China during WWII, for another example).  The Israelis ought to know that it didn't work.  Not because the Serbs were entirely wrong; in fact, they did have a point.  The problem, though, is that you can easily stretch that argument all the way to justify genocide.  Virtually anyone could be fair game if you followed that logic.

I mean, even a 12-year-old girl could easily try to shoot Israeli soldiers too if she found a gun nearby.  You have no logical reason to spare her just because she's a girl.  She clearly has sufficient "hostility".  Any line you try to draw, like one between men and women for example, would be so arbitrary as to render the whole argument pretty much meaningless on the logical level.

So, no.  That defense doesn't work.  That's just whining.  And it's pathetic particularly in Israel's case.  They've been engaged in so many urban guerrilla wars by now that they ought to perfectly understand the reality of asymmetric urban guerrilla warfare.  They are simply being disingenuous, acting as if they were an innocent party new to all of this.  They aren't.  They are veterans.  They are so used to it now that when they have to kill civilians, they don't flinch even remotely as much as American soldiers tend to do.  I know that.  It's obvious from their military history.  We all still remember Beirut.  And it's obvious from the way they shelled the UN shelters in such a reckless way despite the fact that the UN people repeatedly warned them that there were no fighters or rocket launchers inside the buildings.  Killing lots of civilians is effectively part of their job descriptions, unfortunately for everyone including the IDF soldiers themselves.

And it's Israelis themselves that created that urban ghetto called the Gaza Strip.  They have no right to even whine in private about the reality of it.

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40,000 Iraqis stranded on mountain as Isis jihadists threaten death
Members of minority Yazidi sect face slaughter if they go down and dehydration if they stay, while 130,000 fled to Kurdish north
www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/06/40000-iraqis-stranded-mountain-isis-death-threat

I wonder if the neocon professor that I talked to 10 years ago still struggles to pronounce "Yazidi".

Yazidi people are, for the n-th time in their history, facing the danger of mass slaughter at the hands of Sunni Muslim fanatics.  This time the aggressors are a group of Wahhabi Sunni brain-dead murderers who call themselves ISIS, but it has always been the same story.

They've always been the punching bags for the religious fanatics looking for "heretics" to whack around in Northern Iraq.  In case your knowledge on Iraq is as little as a typical neocon's, Iraq is not just a bunch of generic "Iraqis".  OK, I was being a bit unfair to neocons.  If you are one, you have probably heard of Kurdish people at least.  No?  Well, then, I'll give you the Dumbest Of Dumb Neocons certificate, with a BDSM gag to come with it.  Wait for it to reach your mailbox.  Wear it proudly and don't talk about Iraq or the Middle East in general ever again.

There are a bunch of small minorities in Northern Iraq, like Assyrians (Christian) to name the most well-known example other than the Kurds.  Yazidi people are one such group, a tiny one.  They are Muslims, but believe in a very unique version of Islam, which is so "unique" that Sunni Muslims generally don't quite recognize it as proper Islam.  In fact, they are disliked by many for the sole reason that their religion is "weird" (to no-so-religious types) or "blasphemous" (to religious types), even though they have never tried to mess with anyone.

And geography doesn't help them either.  Of all the Northern tribes, they are the ones who live in the area most vulnerable to the attacks from the south, where hotbeds of Sunni fanaticism like Mosul (which fell so easily into the hands of ISIS precisely because of that) are located.

So, that makes them the easiest target for the fanatical Sunni killers, who are not known for much bravery unless you count blowing up yourself to kill innocent people (no one other than those who believe in and practice particular Wahhabi Sunni Islam is "innocent" in their book, though) as a form of bravery.  They always bully the easiest target, and Yazidi are there to satisfy their religious needs.

This is a horrible tragedy.  But at least the media are paying attention to them, unlike back in 2007 when ISIS zombies drove trucks full of explosives into the city center and killed hundreds of Yazidi people, which few cared about.

To be honest, I learned most of this stuff the night before I met the neocon professor, during my quick three-hour study as a preparation for the talk.  I knew very little before.  So I guess you could say I cheated a bit, but I think that's better than not even caring enough about the subject that you are supposed to discuss.  And that's what the neocon guy did(n't). 

We talked about the situation in Iraq, and when I mentioned the Yazidi, he had such a hard time pronouncing the word.  He struggled so hard - "Em, yeah, the Ya... Yahdi... Yahtzee..." - that I decided to trick him:

Me: "Obviously, they have a different religion (<--- technically correct), so the situation can quickly become volatile."

Neocon: "That's true.  Being Christian surrounded by Muslims, that's exactly the metaphor for the global..."

Me: "Muslims.  Being Muslims surrounded by Muslims, you mean.  Right?"

I wonder if he is still struggling to pronounce "Yazidi" now.

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Also, I see the "Not enough dead Jews, eh?" defense massively popular among the Israel apologists.  Michael Brooks, in the youtube clip I posted somewhere above, tried to refute that by saying that he didn't want anyone to die, and that those apologists were missing the point.  That's true, and I agree, but that argument is weak.

Let's say that a few Hamas fighters somehow managed to sneak into Israel proper and successfully blew up a shopping mall in Tel Aviv, instantly killing 1,000 people.  That would make the casualty numbers more even.  Would that render the "disproportionate use of force" accusation invalid?

The answer is NO.  If you think it is YES, you simply don't understand the meaning of the term "disproportionate use of force", even though it has been well defined.  The terrorist act by those few Hamas fighters would be condemned on the strongest terms, but that would be a separate issue, and would not in any shape or form invalidate the "disproportionate use of force" accusation against Israel.

It is not about the numbers.  The numbers can be supporting evidence, but not the central point; the point is that how excessive the incidental deaths of non-combatants are in light of the stated, legitimate war objectives.  And the "disproportionate" argument is one way to assess that intentionality.  Israel is clearly guilty according to the international norm on that.

So, dear Israel apologists, give it up, and go back to the Srebrenica defense.

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Or better yet, read this article and try the ones you haven't yet!

Here are my 21 handy talking-points when you need to apply the whitewash:

1. We didn't do it! (Denials usually don't work, but it's worth a try).

2. We know you think we did it but we aren't admitting anything.

3. Actually, maybe we did do something but not what we are accused of doing.

4. Ok, we did it but it wasn't that bad ("waterboarding isn't really torture, you know").

5. Well, maybe it was pretty bad but it was justified or necessary. (We only torture terrorists, or suspected terrorists, or people who might know a terrorist…")

6. What we did was really quite restrained, when you consider how powerful we really are. I mean, we could have done something even worse.

7. Besides, what we did was technically legal under some interpretations of international law (or at least as our lawyers interpret the law as it applies to us.)

8. Don't forget: the other side is much worse. In fact, they're evil. Really.

9. Plus, they started it.

10. And remember: We are the good guys. We are not morally equivalent to the bad guys no matter what we did. Only morally obtuse, misguided critics could fail to see this fundamental distinction between Them and Us.

11. The results may have been imperfect, but our intentions were noble. (Invading Iraq may have resulted in tens of thousands of dead and wounded and millions of refugees, but we meant well.)

12. We have to do things like this to maintain our credibility. You don't want to encourage those bad guys, do you?

13. Especially because the only language the other side understands is force.

14. In fact, it was imperative to teach them a lesson. For the Nth time.

15. If we hadn't done this to them they would undoubtedly have done something even worse to us. Well, maybe not. But who could take that chance?

16. In fact, no responsible government could have acted otherwise in the face of such provocation.

17. Plus, we had no choice. What we did may have been awful, but all other policy options had failed and/or nothing else would have worked.

18. It's a tough world out there and Serious People understand that sometimes you have to do these things. Only ignorant idealists, terrorist sympathizers, craven appeasers and/or treasonous liberals would question our actions.

19. In fact, whatever we did will be worth it eventually, and someday the rest of the world will thank us.

20. We are the victims of a double-standard. Other states do the same things (or worse) and nobody complains about them. What we did was therefore permissible.

21. And if you keep criticizing us, we'll get really upset and then we might do something really crazy. You don't want that, do you?

Repeat as necessary.

What, you've already tried ALL of them?  Damn, my bad.