Monday, December 27, 2021

The US seeks to Destabilize Russia

The US is not trying to leverage Ukraine to invade Russia.

What the US wants to do, and nearly always has done, is destabilize and then coup with a puppet regime.

The US wants to replace Putin with another US puppet like Yeltsin.

Creating instability within and all around Russia appears to be the way the US plans to do this.

Instability has other benefits for the US: it makes other countries feel they need US protection.  And of course it's good for the Military Industrial Complex.

Quoting from the article linked below:

"The US and Europe have been confronting Russia over Ukraine for some time. US intelligence claimed that Russia could "invade Ukraine" as soon as early 2022, while Russian President Vladimir Putin accused NATO of planning to deploy missile systems in Ukraine that could strike Moscow within minutes..."

"But the US is continuously escalating tensions in Eastern Ukraine. Since the beginning of this year, the US has sent strategic bombers, including B-52s and B-1Bs to approach areas such as Black Sea. In November, the US sent strategic bombers and conducted simulated nuclear strikes against Russia, and entered airspace 20 kilometers away from Russian border, in an obviously provocative move. In addition, Washington released information such as it would impose economic sanctions on Russia and deploy more troops in Eastern Europe to pile on maximum pressure. It is like throwing matches onto dry firewood from time to time, but avoiding the flames deliberately. To the US, the more tense the Ukraine situation becomes, the more European countries will depend on the US. Setting up a common enemy among NATO is conducive to uniting allies. Washington is the biggest beneficiary of this dangerous game."

Monday, November 29, 2021

Population Collapse vs Population Adjustment

 A friend send this alarmist screed on declining birth rates in USA.

I replied:

"Population collapse" is not what happens when birth rates decline but remain above 0.5 children per couple.  That's "population adjustment" which can help curb carbon emissions, water depletion, and other looming catastrophes.

"Population collapse" is what happens when we fail to do population adjustment fast enough, and central North American becomes useless for human agriculture and settlement.


Sunday, November 21, 2021

Bans on Computer Chip sales are Destructive

Tonight, listening to the CODEPINK presentation on Taiwan and China featuring Carl Zha I learned a lot about the history of Taiwan, China, Japan, and the US going back to the Ming dynasty.  Much more complicated than I had imagined.

But in some additional commentary after the main presentation, I learned these things about the Computer Chips situation.

1) Trump banned the sale of chips made in Taiwan to China.  Since Taiwan is the worlds largest manufacturer of computer chips, but China is the worlds largest manufacturer of finished goods, you can see how this would be a problem.

2) Trump also banned the sale of computer chips made in China to the USA.  Nowadays China is also a big manufacturer of computer chips.

I believe we should end destructive bans on the sales of computer chips from Taiwan and China.  We should also seek a more peaceable relationship with China.  Even rolling the clock back to 2010 in these regards would be a big step forwards.


National Endowment for Democracy

A US expat friend of mine (he left USA in the 1980's) repeats endless well known and debunked myths about Cuba, Russia, and the People's Republic of China.  But he has inside information, he says, from expats from other countries including China, which is obviously (to him) superior to mine.  He also recounts stories he has heard from such expats, and limited personal experiences in places like Cuba as proof of his assertions.

Any such stories and experiences are subject to a huge sampling error.   Stories from expats should in no way considered to be "representative" of their home country, simply on first principles, that most people of those countries are not expats.  (Or tourists, etc, that you are likely to meet.)  Likewise one's own experiences are highly biased by one's own views and those one knows--a self-selecting sample--and how one gets into said country and for what reasons--all of which are surely unrepresentative of the people there.  Even firsthand experiences ought to be considered first and foremost as anecdotal evidence and it is wrong to extrapolate from them and say things like "People in Cuba feel..." 

But there's more.  In addition to being not-very-representative on first principles, such individuals or groups to which they belong or attend may be part of or associated with well known regime change organizations, like the NED.

Shockingly to me, my friend had no idea what I meant by NED.  I meant the "National Endowment for Democracy."  So I searched for and found this classic article from a classic book:

https://williamblum.org/chapters/rogue-state/trojan-horse-the-national-endowment-for-democracy

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Academic Diversity and Free Speech

 An interesting discussion, but no clear answers, not even clear questions.

https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/academia-viewpoint-diversity-not?r=87eex&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=

I think there is a contingency here.  Things we might otherwise not need to discuss, we may need to have a dialog about because they actually exist, and their supporters see them in different terms.

As another new person I follow says, we do not need to consider many things on an equal basis.  We can dismiss discussion about whether racism or racial supremacism should exist.  Racism and racial supremacism are clearly bad things.  Do we need to discuss whether white nationalism is racial supremacism?  I don't think so, I think it clearly is.  But that may be where the dialog would start, because white nationalism clearly exists--people self-identify as that label.  A lot of people.

I think that if Israel did not exist, we could dismiss discussions about whether a settler colonial apartheid state should be created in Palestine.  Settler colonial apartheid states are a bad idea.  But Israel does exist, and since some do not see it in those terms, perhaps some of us need to have a dialog about it, sometimes.

"Dialog" should not include threats, tiki torches, smashing windows, or violence, though sometimes it does.  It is not beyond the pale for dialog to include racist speech as well as false accusations of racism--because dialog is the place to argue about such things.  (That means, dialog may include both what some regard as antisemitism and what others regard as false accusations of anti-semitism.)

Dialog may include non-violent protest and heckling.

Dialog may include boycotts and divestment.

Dialog (even without threats, etc) isn't always appropriate, and some dialogs should indeed be beyond the pale in education and media.  But that is not applicable to the 12 versions of pro- and anti- Zionism that Timothy Burke identifies.  These are all taken seriously by some serious scholars.

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Sanctions are Behind the Crisis in Belarus

Belarus is back in the news today, with stories that Belarussian authorities are enabling middle eastern migrants (refugees?) to cross into Poland and other NATO countries.  Poland is extremely anti-ME-refugee and hugh clashes ensure.  Hard Winter is coming.

Without context, little of this makes any sense.  What are ME migrants doing in Belarus???

So I looked up what MoonOfAlabama had to say on the subject.  His last essay was from a month ago.

Basically, because of new sanctions against Belarus last year, which preventing the airline from flying to any western european cities, the airline has gone looking for new customers, and what do you know, there are large numbers of Syrians and Iraqi's in Turkey still able to pay the price for a ticket to Belarus, keeping the airline going, and Turkey is not part of the EU, so no sanctions.

Coincidentally, last night I'd stumbled upon a movie, The Weight of Chains, made in Canada in 2011 making an even better case for the role of sanctions and other western policies in the violent breakup of Yugoslavia.  Top of the list of those who should have died in the Hague for crimes in the Former Yugoslavia should have been Reagan, GHW Bush, and Clinton (just as Milosevic said).  Outline starting in the 1980's, crushing IMF debt deliberately used as wedge by Reagan to destroy "Communism" (actually social democracy, but not aligned with US empire) in Yugoslavia.  Any province that defects gets immediate recognition by the US as a sovereign state, forgiveness of debt, and US markets.  Well of course this sets off ethnofascists everywhere to define their new "nation" and secede.  The Bosnian Muslim leader was as bad as any of them.  The west focuses on one oversized retaliatory strike which could be blamed on Serbians (aligned with Russia), instead of the whole picture--which was more than an order of magnitude larger.  Other crimes brushed off.  I downloaded the HD version which is much better than the one on Youtube.  I've never heard the breakup story told this well, even though I've heard this basic outline (the west was at fault) for almost 20 years from most leftists I respect, I never understood it.  I imagine most in the west haven't heard this version at all.  The success of the movie was sufficient the producer made two on different anti-western-imperialism topics, which I haven't yet checked out.

Back to Moon's essay last month on Belarus, I'd endorse all of it except the last sentence, which sounds like wishful thinking.

Friday, November 12, 2021

Deconstructing Jimmy Dore

I've stumbled on a wonderful 50 minute video which carefully deconstructs a very popular (900,000 viewers) "leftist" named Jimmy Dore.  If you don't have time for the full 50 minutes I'd still recommend watching the first 11, or even 5.  This is not the Jimmy Dore show, but a deconstruction of it, showing how Jimmy Dore lies.

(As a leftist myself, I would call Jimmy Dore an ultra-leftist.  Ultra-leftists attack both major political parties "from the left" and insist on not voting for either one.  This is a useless strategy.  The better strategy is to vote for the one which is better, even slightly better, and save time and effort for other kinds of politics, including in-good-faith primary challenges as Bernie did--ultimately endorsing the winning party candidate, demonstrations, strikes, and other forms of public education.  More often than not, refusing to vote for the "lesser-evil" as ultra-leftists call it, leads to far greater evil than expected.  I had this experience personally in 1980 and 2000, and I learned my lesson.  Noam Chomsky correctly calls the "lesser-evil" the "greater-good" and I agree with what Chomsky says in general and on this topic in particular.)

Jimmy Dore is now filling the ultra-leftist role on Youtube, where in the past 2 years he has become a star.  Because I follow most of the left, I've seen lots of people falling for his schtick and occasionally tried to argue back (though, I've also stopped following a lot of people who constantly follow him, and after seeing 2 minutes of him, I have never watched any more Jimmy Dore but I still read what people are saying about him--because he is so popular.  I find him to disgusting to bear.)

Dore didn't start out being an anti-vaxxer.  As the video below shows, he was initially critical of how only elites were getting the first vaccines, and how people in poor countries weren't, etc.  That take was largely correct.

But sometime in the middle of this year, Dore pivoted to disseminating and even originating anti-vaxx content.  The video below shows how this is done.  Of course, Jimmy Dore doesn't say he is anti-vaxx.  He says he has taken the vaccine, but wants people knowing the full story.  He has "concerns."  That's what they all say.  As the video shows, Dore very selectively quotes from articles, leaving out the author's key sentences and ideas, and rearranging bits to make an anti-vaxx story.  And sometimes, in one case, adds in words that weren't even in the article in order to give it his slant.

If his goal were merely to inform, why would he do this?

Clearly it's not actually to inform people.  Then why?  Well if you look at his viewership counts, once he started pushing anti-vax stories his viewer counts went way up.  And...he's got a mortgage to pay off.  A big mortgage because he lives in LA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wRDLf54Scs&t=2s

Monday, November 8, 2021

Steele Dossier Unmasked

We know know that the stories in the Steele Dossier, a central pillar of Russiagate, came from Chuck Dolan, a Clinton political operative, and not Russian Sources, as Igor Danchenko claimed to the FBI in 2017.  Chuck Dolan was a fellow employee of Danchenko's at a political research firm.  Journalist Bernhard also concludes that the FBI knew this was false in 2017, but waited until now to charge Danchenko with perjury because the FBI leadership was hostile to Trump.

The Steele Dossier was debunked almost the moment it surfaced in the news.  Journalist Craig Murray examined the Dossier around then and found it disproven and impossible anyway.  For one thing, Michael Cohen had never been to Prague (implausibly according to the Dossier to arrange secret payments), and mainstream journalists hadn't bothered to check on that because they wanted to hype the Dossier.



NYTimes ran a guest editorial advising Democrats to give up on the Biden Agenda, for the sake of the 2022 elections.

(Most I follow are advising the opposite, without passing the Biden Agenda there is no hope for 2022.)

The grey lady identified the authors as advisors to Clinton.

It was not pointed out that one was a Hedge Fund manager and advisor to Trump, and the other ran Democrats for Trump.

This is just one small example of "dump the Left" and "blame the Left" in mainstream media, and the article mentions others, notably Times and many others blaming the loss of centrist Terry McAuliffe on the "Left", when McAuliffe was one of the chief DNC moneymen (and former DNC chair) who worked tirelessly against Bernie and other left Democratic Party primary challengers.

I noticed earlier how the Times described the passage of BIF on Friday, criticizing the 6 progressives who voted against it, without describing the whole story...when the day began (and for months in advance) the plan was to pass both bills in tandem, and then at the moment of truth a handful of centrist democrats refused, hypocritically demanding official budget numbers which would take weeks to prepare, when by all accounts the BIF net cost was larger (not to mention military spending) and they didn't hold that up.

Sunday, October 24, 2021

Obama's CIA Family

I've been on to this story since at least 2016.  And it fits the wider pattern.  All US Presidents since Truman if not before have deep US Intelligence connections, often including family ties.

A retired Intelligence friend of mine likes to say Putin "is KGB."  That's oversimplification, Putin is also arguably anti-KGB and certainly anti-Communist.  But the same phenomenon is illustrated, much better I think, by US Presidents.  And all the better, for maintaining the control from Intelligence,  that there be a revolving door of them, rather than a singular personality who can become independent (and at least potentially serve the entire nation, instead of merely the elite).

The Bush Family is the best illustration.  George HW Bush was certainly CIA director in the late 1970's, but many accounts place him central to attempts to assassinate Castro as well, as proprietor of the CIA-front "Zapata Oil Company" which was a short distance from Cuba and used as a platform for launching attacks against Cuba, and from there to the successful assassination of the becoming-rogue President Kennedy who failed to back his operation up with the USAF.  GHW Bush's father had worked for the same law firm as Allen Dulles, which notoriously arranged banking for the Nazi's (that was Prescott Bush's personal job).  If you were looking for anti-Communist US elites who would do anything, anything to destroy the Soviet Union, you'd come straight to the Bush Family.  Except they were already there, right at the center of Intelligence, already.

Out of that, the Bush Family got 5 US Presidencies, 2 with puppet Reagan as front man, one for himself (and curiously when the "collapse" of the Soviet Union occurred), and two for his son GWB.  So far.

Trump came from the contracting dark side of the company, being personally tutored by Roy Cohn--himself not so much ever a professional employee of the firm but instead a top asset, devoted to trashing enemies of the state.

Obama's Mother's life reads like that of a very enterprising asset, if not agent.  And his official father too.  And there's more.  I've seen much of this before, but never with so many good pictures.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/10/01/a-company-family-the-untold-history-of-obama-and-the-cia/

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Politics is Important

Though voting for debate on a measure which might (barring Filibuster reform) never come up for a vote, or voting for a vote on a measure which will surely lose, might seem mere theatrics, they are in fact the stuff of Politics, and we should leverage them as much as possible.

Two of the worst Democratic Party Senators have become dark stars in recent fights.  More attention needs to be focussed on the actual details, such as the elimination of the only serious tool to fight global warming (the clean electricity standard) and negotiation for drug prices.  IF our government could only pass those two things, and skip (for now) crap such as a childcare subsidy for those with family income below $60k, I'd feel that at least some progress had been made.

How are those with family income less than $60k going to hire the help needed to prove to authorities that they have income less than $60k?  Neoliberal programs such as this (remember Obama's "help" for low income homeowners) typically barely gets utilized.

But of course the establishment leans toward token benefits (as little benefit as possible, and feeding some new predatory industries) and business as usual (predatory capitalism).  We need to see fundamental institutional changes.  The rest leaves us still headed toward the abyss, just with more bullshit paperwork.

Nevertheless, it's important to tie obstruction of needed changes to names and make the worst of the obstructionists lose in elections and look like losers too.  That's Politics too. 

Sunday, October 10, 2021

Storyville

October 10, 1917 was the day Storyville was closed.  I share the take of historian Eric Loomis on this.


https://twitter.com/ErikLoomis/status/1447203382117249030?s=20


Meanwhile, many Communists I see on Twitter are calling sex work the greatest of all Capitalist exploitation, which no true Communist can defend.

Also often bragging about not drinking or smoking.

First, socialism is not end-communism.  End-communism is not only the end of all exploitation, but the end of all unmet needs.  Socialism is the middle ground where some exploitation has been eliminated, but people still work for wages under a boss of some kind (not a capitalist boss, but nonetheless a boss).  As long as there's a boss, or any kind of paymaster, there is exploitation.

During this intermediate time of socialism, some will have their minds exploited, some their pluck, some their bodies, and so on.

Worst is those who sell their soul in service of the imperial state.  But a state, even a socialist state, needs defense.

Second worst is those who sell their rage to the protection of capital and supremacism at home.  But there must be peace officers.

Way way down on the list of exploitation is medical doctors.  Medical doctors as claimants on the health insurance industry and in other ways are exploited, meanwhile as small business, may in term exploit workers.  But we will always need medical doctors!

I see sex workers about the same level.  Given the natural imbalance in heterosexual needs, we will always need sexual surrogates of many kinds, direct and intermediated.

Drugs are an equally essential part of living, alcohol, marijuana, and caffeine are the most useable and useful in moderation.  Tobacco is deadly, and should always be substituted with something better, but was a key part of The Greatest Generation, and before, FWIW.

Anything to do with "personal purity" is a religious matter, best not discussed in secular company.

Monday, September 6, 2021

The Purge of Socialists

This great article by Winstanley is first of all a critique of Guardian columnist and blogger Owen Jones and his fake moves defending leftists then stabbing them in the back.

 But it's much more than that.  It goes all the way back to the story of Rezso Kaztner, the Zionist Jew who convinced non-Zionists Jews in Hungary to not resist going to Auschwitz, even though he knew what it would mean for them, while arranging to have his friends sent to Palestine.  This was made into a play by Jim Allen and produced by socialist Ken Loach--who some have called Britain's greatest filmmaker.  The first time around, in 1987, the play was cancelled before the first performance due to outrage from British Zionists.  It was eventually shown in 1999.  Many anti-Zionists members of the British Labour party defended Ken Loach.  This episode created the ammunition which got Corbyn and many members of the British Labour Party removed from the party on the basis of alleged anti-Semitism from 2017 to 2019.  Many if not most of those expelled members, like Tony Greenstein, were themselves Jewish.   Ultimately, the play was based on well established facts.  Furthermore, the actions of Kaztner were not inconsistent with what other Zionists had been doing as far back as 1933, when they started officially cooperating with Nazis to help force Jews out of Germany and into Palestine.  Zionists blocked the planned worldwide Boycott of Nazis in 1933, and later in the 1940's convinced countries including USA not to take in Jewish refugees--because Zionists believed they should be going (in many cases against their wishes) to Palestine.

So this article pulls together the complete Kaztner-Loach-Corbyn story which I have never seen all in one place.  As well as connecting it to Owen Jones.

Sunday, August 29, 2021

Thinking first about Israel

The friend asking what would happen if US stopped arms donations was not happy that I first brought up Israel, claiming that to be disproportionate.  I replied:

Is it disproportionate to think first about Israel as a recipient of US military and diplomatic assistance?  I think not.

Israel is the #1 recipient of US military aid (donated weapons), diplomatic support (including Security Council vetos, special US negotiations such as Abraham accords, and General Assembly vetos), and as you say, "intelligence sharing."

Egypt receives the same basic annual $3.5B military aid, but doesn't get the special gifts (such as $700M restock of Iron Dome parts recently) on top of the annual donation, and Egypt has often faced repermands and suspensions.  Egypt receives the same annual donation as Israel because of agreements in the Camp David Accords, which were initiated to better protect Israel.  So, basically, the #2 recipient of donated weapons is much about Israel too.

It's fairly common understanding that the Middle East is the biggest war risk in the world (aka powderkeg).  War has never stopped there, despite paper thin "agreements" recently among US client state regimes there which generally don't represent popular feelings in Arab countries.

Weapons sales to Saudi Arabia may be larger.  They pay cash for their weapons and sell oil in US dollars even if not to USA--which also helps USA.  Saudi Arabia is allowed to buy weapons, that way it can win Sunni Islamic hearts and minds to look at places other than Israel, such as Yemen.  But it's not very successful, as Israel remains the number one shared concern of Islamic extremists around the world, as well as Arabs and muslims generally, regardless of whether Shia or Sunni.

It is also commonly believed that the Israel Lobby is the #1 most influential foreign lobby in the USA.  Politicians of all stripes have appeared before AIPAC, for example.  Junket trips and personal connections, dealmaking, and corruption are legendary.  Now it's an open question how the unmatched support that Israel gets from USA is because of shared geopolitical interests (and usefulness to US Empire) and how much is the result of unmatched lobbying prowess.  Noam Chomsky points to how useful Israel is to US Imperial Planners, and how that got a big boost in that regards in 1967 (when Israel showed the world what it can do) which hasn't worn off, and he discounts the notion of Israel wagging the US dog simply because of lobbying, instead he paints Israel as the key street fighter for the US Empire.  Low level military people I've met don't believe this and say that Israel is not so beloved, respected, or trusted by US military, and that its unmatched US support results from lobbying and paid off politicians.  I think it's a combination of both.

But one way or the other, it's not clear to me that US can ever get out of the global domination business--which it must do soon for the world to be sustainable--without dropping support for Israel.  And then the US would get dumped on by Israel's next patron.  That box is another reason why the world we know is unsustainable, the only question is how it's going to evolve or end.  Catastrophically is the best guess.

 

Saturday, August 28, 2021

Israel means the threat of nuclear annihilation will never end

 A friend asks:

>What would happen, if the U.S. stopped selling or donating arms to friendly countries who need them?  Consider the ramifications from a worldwide perspective.


I replied:

Two most dangerous possibilities:

1.  A number of other countries gang up and destroy the State of Israel.

2.  Israel, fearful that #1 might happen, blows up the world.

Thus, the State of Israel is a global doomsday machine.

US Empire serves Israel, at least for the moment, because we think we are better aligned.  It's "our" doomsday machine, the doomsday machine of US Empire...at long as US Empire remains Israel's best friend.  So we send $3.5B weapons, plus more when asked, plus vetos at the Security Council and No votes in the general assembly, and many other things.

That's alignment.  For now anyway.  But also one which works against the possibility of ever reducing expenditure on, let alone eliminating, nuclear weapons.  That's more alignment, around one of the two biggest possibilities of global annihilation, and also the needs of the military industrial complex.

Could Israel exist without Israel and the US having nuclear weapons?  They seem to want not only that, but to have a regional monopoly in the middle east.


Thursday, August 26, 2021

The Burden Of Proof

When assessing claims of guilt, or even brutality and monsterousness (which the Western media often throws at the Taliban, while not looking in the mirror), assessment of the truth is the most important thing.

Having seen their lies over the years, I would personally not trust anything about a enemy of the USA published in the US Media.  They're proven liars over and over and over, for example:

Bombing of the USS Maine

Gulf of Tonkin

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Assad's Chemical Attacks

Russiagate

And this is only the short list.  All of my friends are with me on the first 3 of these, but not the last two.  Because of those, and my tendency not to portray Putin or China as the Greatest Evil in the World Today, and things like that which don't look at US evils first, I am an outlier of all the people I know personally--friends and family.  I'm labeled a Putinist or Assadist or Stalinist.  I'm constantly quizzed on the latest headlines from the US War Wurlitzer before the antiwar media has had the time to debunk them, and criticized for Not Keeping Up, or being a Conspiracy Theorist (in particular for disbelieving in a conspiracy between Trump and Putin).

And these friends and family consider themselves opposed to war or harmful military actions or financial sanctions.*  They just believe a set of the Imperial lies in which I don't believe.  But they don't consider them lies, so we are back to the question of Truth.

As I see it, the central problem with Truth is that it's an impossible ideal.  Truth famously requires three parts:

The Plain Truth.

The Whole Truth.

Nothing But the Truth.

The central problem is in The Whole Truth.  That is anything which could have involved in the matters at hand.  Effectively, that means the entire universe leading up to that point.  No one can have an understanding that vast.

Secondly, the Plain Truth depends upon The Whole Truth, because without The Whole Truth, one cannot decide which of the issues involved rises to top to become the Plain Truth.

Similar issues apply to Nothing But The Truth, though it would seem easy in principle not to say anything not true...but then that itself has the same three parts.

The bottom line is that the Truth is an impossible Platonic Ideal which we will never know completely, if even partly.

Because of that fact, we routinely apply simplifications in our search for the truth.  Some trust their religious leaders, others may trust leading scientists or atheists.  At a deeper level, we apply burden of proof principles that deliberately bias the discovery of truth toward one extreme or the other.  For example, in a scientific test, we reject findings that don't reject the null hypothesis one out of twenty times, written in frequentist statistics as p < 0.05.  But that means, as I am at odds to explain to my friends who accept every "scientific" pronouncement in the their media as known fact that in a large number of cases we may fail to find relationships that actually ARE there, the problem being that the test involved failed to reach sufficient power to detect those relationships at p < 0.05.  And then there is also the possibility that when supposedly p < 0.05 is satisfied, in 1 out of 20 tests just meeting that threshold, the relationship will itself be false.  And then there are endless possibilities of bias.  The best situation is when you have more and more tests, conducted by many different people, and over and over they show p values far less than 0.05.  Which is precisely where we are with vaccines...they are widely proven to be effective and safe beyond the shadow of a doubt (very high imputable p values) with only a couple of small historical exceptions in the past 80 years.  If only everything were that simple, sadly most things aren't.  In many if not most cases it is impossible to do good blind and randomized testing, for example, and then you can't even get started on your search for truth very well and easily.

So it may matter, and usually does crucially, to decide in which direction the burden of truth should go.

For drugs, for example, it usually makes sense to put the burden of proof against the drug, because we don't want to intervene in ways that we aren't sure are helpful.  First Do No Harm.

The same First Do No Harm principle applies to foreign countries as well.  We don't want to intervene unless it is useful and helpful.

So the burden of proof should be on those alleging brutality on the part of foreign governments or their agents.  Such claims need be evaluated critically and held to high standards of veracity such as Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.  The burden of proof is on those criticizing Putin, Assad, PRC, Madero, Cuba, Iran, and yes Taliban rather than on those defending them.


(*They say that something can or should be done.  Perhaps by a global authority which has some global legitimacy in their eyes, such as the UN.  Or an NGO such as Amnesty International.)


Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Endless Freedom and Democracy

FAIR shows how western media is ignoring civilian deaths caused by US, assuming noble purpose, and often suggesting some way we could have held on longer.  Amnesia in service of the endless war machine.  No one should be fooled.

IMO the problems with withdrawal were caused by the failure to negotiate peace, not merely withdrawal, with the Taliban.  But no President could have done that, and if they had, the media would have framed it in even more negative terms.  Any President would have had to continue to fight forever from surrounding countries, continuing the illegal war forever, rather than accept defeat at the hands of monsters we first created* then isolated, demonized, and attacked.  And we haven't really made peace even yet, while demanding that the Taliban do so.  We want to keep the Taliban from making deals with their neighbors Russia, China, and Iran.

As horrible as the Taliban are, they killed fewer Afghans than the US.  Afghan women were by and large under similar straits under US backed warlords as the Taliban and were not calling for the US to stay.  Feminism, Freedom, and Democracy were weaponized in service of a brutal US occupation.  So it is, often, with idealism--it is weaponized to serve empire.

I am happy that Biden stood the course on withdrawal, anyway.  That it wasn't going to be perfect would of course be weaponized by the war media, like any withdrawals from endless wars.  Nor would any part of the establishment accept a true surrender--which would be a surrender to the Taliban, giving them the keys and normalization.  No, from every hill, using every means available, we will still fight on, to destroy whatever government continues to give an ear to our enemies.  I suspect that's already happening.  Meanwhile, we turn a blind eye to ourselves and a magnifying glass to our enemies, as always.  

I dream of no foreign entanglements, respect for the internal processes of other countries, and never ending healthy self-critique.  We should not interfere in the internal governing or financial processes of other countries.  Such a country turning away from empire would have the resources to draw down the impending climate disaster as well as survive.  But without that turning away from empire, neither outcome will be possible.

(*The Taliban were among the least vile elements of the Mujahadeen, which US backed in a long proxy war against Russia which was the pre-prelude to the US occupation.  The Mujahadeen were the good guys them, Freedom Fighters, while they were tearing up a progressive socialist democracy that happened to be aligned with our enemy, the USSR.  Contrary to myth, we continued to support the effort to regime-change the Afghan socialist government which lasted beyond 1991.  Somehow Feminism didn't matter to US media then.  The problem came when the resulting government, led by the relatively-least-vile element of those we supported, recognized the usefulness of recognizing their neighbors Iran/Russia/China.  So obviously it's really weaponized idealism.  The hypocrisy of the US is galling.  And we US citizens should be more concerned with extremist misogyny in and by the USA itself, in many forms, including the attack on abortion rights in the USA, as well as endless imperialism planned, produced and delivered upon the world (sanctions, coops, color revolutions, etc, against Iran/Cuba/Russia/China/Venezuela/Syria/etc)--where the suffering caused by these horrors we cause hurt mostly poor women and children and not the intended leaders--whose primary difference from the good guys that we support (inc Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Columbia) are generally that the sanctioned leaders are slightly nicer to others generally, and especially that they are nicer to our enemies (including all in that group by definition anyway).  We're incredibly sensitive to the idea that any enemy country might spend a few bucks trying to influence our elections, while blind to the fact we've run the biggest regime change and global domination racket in the world since 1945.  We blow up countries we don't like.  The US regime developed from Imperialism and hasn't shaken it since.)

Sunday, August 8, 2021

The Moon Is There (Whether I Look or Not)

I have decided to focus my Amateur Physics Speculations on the one thing that bugs me the most.  The Measurement Problem.  I'm choosing the phrase this as  The Moon Is There so I do not have to engage theological speculation about G_d (whether they play dice or not, and actually I'd assume they did) and focus directly on the issue of subjectivity/objectivity which I think is the actual nexus of this problem.

It seems that whenever I've listened to a theoretical physicist long enough (albeit a small sample) they confess to me that they do not actually believe  The Copenhagen Interpretation.  Physics students must learn this as it's a key part of one of our best and most important theories.  But it's clearly nonsense, no matter how you want to put it (using G_d or not).  So each theoretical physicist who even takes such things seriously has devised one or another ways around the Measurement Problem.  Typically nowadays this involves attempting to describe the dynamics of wave function collapse, as if other than measurement may be involved, therefore moving the scene from the subjective to the objective.

The point here is to make suggestions, most of which may well be faulty.  As a crackpot conspiracy theorist, it is easy for me to produce "theories" to explain nearly anything.  Often contradictory with each other and themselves, but sometimes possibly not.  I'm hoping this "skill" might be just the thing to help solve this problem.


The Universe Has Less Information Than It Would Seem

I already posted this basic idea, and it still looks good to me.  One way or another, Quantum Theory is incomplete.  But the obvious way it could be incomplete--that there are additional hidden variable(s)--has been shown to be false by the experimental research testing the Bell-type inequalities.  But it looks to me like there's a way out of this conundrum, and that is if instead of additional local information there is actually less global information than would at first appear.  It is as if some previous world had been subjected to lossy compression to produce the present one.  What this would mean is that things are more correlated than we would expect.

One way to imagine this would as if the 3 dimensions of space were actually 2 dimensions, but somehow we see them projected as 3 dimensions.  Equivalently, the 4 dimensions of Spacetime were actually 3 dimensions.  Or maybe 3.5 dimensions ?

As weird as this might be, it's still not as weird as the Copenhagen Interpretation.


The Wave Function (and Entanglement) Isn't a Thing

Even among actual theoretical physicists who know a lot more than me, there is debate as to whether the entire universe is entangled.  This may follow from the Big Bang.  But if the entire universe is entangled, then surely the wave function has collapsed too, and these very notions are rendered very differently (and you could say, following Wittgenstein, into uselessness).

But I arrived at the idea differently.  I imagined very advanced aliens who are very tiny, fast, and invisible.  And they fiddle inside our entanglement experiments.  They could have produced what we consider the primary particles of an interaction, entangled them, and measured one of the entangled pair before the particle even begins to collide in our experiment.  So they already know what it is, even if we don't.  In fact, the wave function (if it were something real) has already collapsed.   We just don't know about it yet, and carry on as if it hadn't, and for us it behaves as if it hadn't.  For them, it has, and they interpret those experiments differently.

And so, by these arguments and others, it seems to me that neither The Wave Function nor Entanglement is a Thing.  The universe is made of Spacetime and Energy, not Probabilities.  Our best understanding of the universe may be necessarily in the form of functions of probabilities, but not the universe itself.  Likewise our assertions of entanglement relate to those things we know to be entangled but someone else may see many other things as being entangled too, it's determined by what different observers know about the universe.

But what also shows up here, in the sense of many more things being correlated than we know about, is another way the universe contains less information than at first it appears.  Things seemingly independent are actually correlated, that means there is less actual information, again.


Faulty Instruments

One way to imagine the 3 or 3.5 dimensional compression of Spacetime is this.  Suppose you are setting up to do a Bell Type experiment.  But your cross-eyed machinist has built the arm for the Q detector in the wrong plane, so it describes the angle incorrectly.  This could explain getting measurements that deviate from those predicted for hidden variables.

OK, so your machinist is better than that.  But suppose that unbeknownst to your machinist, the Z dimension is continuously expanding with time.  So then even if the apparatus is built correctly in static time, it is wrong for any event which takes time to complete.

Living in the present always, as is our nature, we don't observe any changes in spatial dimensions.  Everything we know is locked into place by electromagnetic, strong, and weak interactions.  But the particles we measure are not so locked into place.  They cannot be.  So in their terms, we measure them wrongly.

Spacetime may be not so much "expanding" as the past is "compressing."  Perhaps it's even lossy compression of the kind in which actual dimensions are converted to a mere ordering.  That could produce the sort of fractional dimension I am suggesting.


Spacetime and Things In Spacetime

Another possible redundancy in the universe is the partitioning of massy objects and spacetime itself.  Hmmn, maybe not.  As far as we know, spacetime isn't so partitioned, though it appears that way to us.  Massy objects simply have fields which appear to give them the expanse we experience.


When Time Advances, there is More Information.  Therefore there was less information in the Past than the Present.  This means there must be a limit to resolution...so that new information is created with each event...that could not have been fully predicted.  It is Spacetime itself which has Free Will.  And as it creates new information, it expands, so the past was smaller too.   Spacetime propagates its decisions through it's light cone within which every particle can move.



Thursday, July 22, 2021

More Russiaphobia

Recently, the sleeping Russiagate psyop created by the US Deep State (especially CIA) bounced back to life with a new claim from one of its central conspiracy theorists, Luke Harding, who published another unsubstantiated account (totally unbelieveable IMO) in the Guardian which was lovingly echoed by several of my friends.

Since then, I've seen a number of debunkings and near-debunkings.  Sadly I've been too preoccupied with personal matters (and a new backyard cat I need to get spayed, somehow, and don't let pets take over your life) to keep up with this and I've now misplaced the mother lode of debunkings on this particular new claim I stumbled across one night.

Here's Doctorow's take, which I completely agree with.  It's not really a debunking though.

Aaron Mate tweeted that MSNBC wouldn't touch the story, and got some more info in the comments.  I don't think I found that "treasure trove of debunking" here however, though there are some others.

Matt Taibbi has weighed in.






The US is the Absolute Worst

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-us-is-the-absolute-worst-notes/comments

I agree with the thesis and about 95% of the content here.

All except the nearl-anti-Vax and anti-AOC parts (though I will concede, AOC is not strongly anti-Imperialist, but pining for a 3rd party sweep does little good).

I've had the "US is the worst empire" in mind for at least 10 years now.  It's not one I can get many friends to agree with however.

Nowadays many are primed to fight back against the valid "10's of millions" charge with the made up claim that "Communism (or particular Communist countries) killed 100 million."  Which is utterly wrong on many levels.  Or if it's not wrong, then it can be equivalently shown that Capitalism has killed billions.

Caitlin defuses this counterattack with the focus on "no other country is doing this now," a pretty good approach.


Monday, June 21, 2021

Touring Xinjiang

 A member of German Green Party visits Xinjiang again with his wife from the region.

Chinese society is run so much better than US and US Vassal and Occupied states, I think we'd be better off if Chinese were running the world.

While I bitterly oppose US Imperialism in principle, and especially the way it destabilizes the world by supporting religious and other extremists to endlessly and mercilessly attack "enemies," I have not done enough to stop it to wash my hands of guilt.




Saturday, June 19, 2021

Message to Anthropologist David Orenstein

Hi David,


I loved your presentation for the Freethinkers today.  It seems to me if we are already being visited by extraterrestrials, as recent disclosures suggest, then the are almost certain not to be "takers," otherwise, they would already have taken us.  They are apparently just studying us now, and perhaps they may help us later.  There is only a remote chance they are takers but they are just biding their time, perhaps waiting for us to do ourselves in and save them the trouble.  But it seems unlikely they would want to wait and would have better means at their disposal to get the job done more quickly, perhaps sterilizing the planet with heat or radiation.  Which gets to another thought of mine.  It doesn't seem worthwhile for ET to come here just for raw materials, which can almost certainly be obtained more cheaply elsewhere.  The most useful thing they might want would be The Planet Itself situated in a wonderful orbit for carbon and water based life.  But anyway, if they've been here a long time, it seems more likely they are studying or even perhaps helping already.  I wouldn't think they would be needed for the Pyramids, but what they might be needed for is saving us from nuclear accidents and the like.  It seems we have already survived great dangers against difficult odds.  Finally I think Hawking and others are thinking too much of the limits.  With billion year science and technology, it might be more like the Heart of Gold spaceship and Infinite Improbability Drive, where you can just set the coordinates to any point in spacetime.  And then, given that such god-like technology were available, such ET's would no doubt be everywhere in the universe already.  Why?  It would seem most reasonable to believe because they would like to see more natural beauty, even if they have to help it along in most cases.  I too love Sagan and am watching Episode 13 of Cosmos tonight.  Just because you brought it up, I finally unwrapped my box set.  Thanks!

Wednesday, June 9, 2021

History of Canaan-Phoenicia

https://www.worldhistory.org/canaan/

Canaan was the name of the place, not the name of any particular "people."  There were many many different peoples in the region, in different locales and times.  Some of them were the Phoenicians, inventors of the phonetic alphabet.  The Phoenicians started from coastal cities in the southeast Mediterranean in the Bronze age, originally as far south as Gaza, and established a maritime empire throughout the Mediterranean foreshadowing Greece and Rome.  They were great exporters of paper and purple dye and became very rich.  "Canaan" and "Phoenicia" are both names for purple, the latter being the Greek name for purple, though not all Canaanites were Phoenicians.  Originally extending to Gaza, their major city state became Tyre, in modern Lebanon.  The Phoenician civilization was destroyed by Rome in 64 BCE with great prejudice...salting the earth in Carthage which was their greatest African settlement.

After Herodotus called the region previously known as "Canaan" (as originally inscribed in early Bronze Age mesopotamian texts) "Palestine" (after the then Philistine cities on the coast, though there are other theories, such as the Canaanite god Pales) in his 5th century BCE texts, the newer name gradually replaced the old names.

https://www.worldhistory.org/palestine/


Maps

A funny dialog about maps of the middle east. 

These maps show claimed "control" over the area, not necessarily who lives there.

Zionists seem to have the weird idea that because they have ancestors back in Israel, including ancestors that during some intervals controlled the region, they should control it exclusively now.

Virtually everyone alive has ancestors in that area during one epoch or another.  This is probably more true of 1917 Palestinians ("Arabs" in the borders of Mandate Palestine) than any other group you could specify, including European Jews.

When Jews were said to have left Israel after defeats in 70 CE and 130 CE, it was NOT everyone who left.  It was soldiers and elites...NOT farmers.  (I need to read "The Invention of the Jewish People" to get a better idea of this, reviews say the book claims there is NO historical record of mass numbers of people leaving "Israel" during these times at all!  So that would mean, most likely, the Palestinians of 1917 may well have been the descendents of the people who lived there in Biblical times and before as well.  I would only qualify with a phrase like "mostly" and "most descent."  We are all descended from everyone who has descendants from 2000 years ago and more, but some are more descended from some in that era than others.  This becomes comprehensible when you realize that the increments of proportionate descent over 100 generations is a very small quantity, 1e-30 or so.  In other words, to describe someone's descent in the most compact possible form it would take over 30 decimal digits.)

Anyway you evaluate it, the dispossession of Palestinians and the theft of their self determination over the entire region of 48 Palestine is a crime against humanity that will not go away until the Palestinians have full rights in their homeland of 48 Palestine, or within the meager and unfair-to-them 67 borders two state compromise with no reductions.  No amount of posturing over who controlled what in the past, or who is descended from whom, will change that.

Laws which systematically discriminate against Palestinians in community planning and leasing are a continuation and extension of that crime against humanity.


Friday, June 4, 2021

Free Palestine videos

Dr Norman Finkestein on the 2021 Gaza Invasion and Israeli 'Apartheid'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FWUR-U2550

In the above video, Finkelstein compares the 2021 with earlier attacks on Gaza, and notes the sea change in US and worldwide opinion regarding Palestine, as shown in the huge Free Palestine protests and the B'Tselem and Human Rights Watch report calling out Israel as an Apartheid State which Persecutes Palestinians, both of these being Crimes Against Humanity.  He relates the meaning behind Sec Brinklen's remarks in a press conference that he "had not seen the intelligence" regarding the Hamas operations that justified the bombing of the AP tower.  He said normally the SoS would simply lie about such things, brushing aside the question with insistence that Israel had right to defend itself, but in saying he had not seen the intelligence,  Blinken was sending message to Israel on behalf of Biden administration "We're not going to lie for you as before." Likewise, though many are disappointed with Biden's initially stonewalling the Cease Fire in the Security Council (China proposed it 6 times to be shot down by US) and sending additional $735 million in replacement arms donations (and now another $1 billion is being requested), Finkelstein believes that more than before, Biden seems to be putting "parameters" on future aid.  To wit, no ground invasion massacres as in the 2014 "Protective Edge."  Biden, and allies around the world, are feeling the heat, and they are letting Israel know, in private, which seems to be the way Biden prefers doing things.

This video is wonderful, both in what it says and what it doesn't say.  It is nice to see a sea change in public opinion.  But IMO this does not necessarily mean a resolution is at hand anytime soon.  So I worry about overconfidence that might come from extrapolating from Finkelstein's remarks to an inevitable resolution.  Instead, they should encourage us to do more of what we have been doing.



Wednesday, June 2, 2021

Pro Israel Videos

 A friend of mine has submitted the following pro-Israel videos (and a few articles).  My comments.

Palestine 1900-1920 (Old camera footage makes everything look very backward...but NOT unpopulated!  Though the camera itself may be the most dysfunctional thing of all.)  Starts in Jaffa, though film is titled "Jerusalem."  Perhaps they didn't want to use the name Palestine.  They use the term Holy Land.  I see Orientalism starting with the very title.  I imagine Edward Said must have seen this film.

Palm Oil?  Yes, it's evil also.  But two evils does not make Israel right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgcfgTTuku0

Qu'ran's sweet sounding verse has some ugly parts removed.  Yes...but the word "innocent" replaces the removed text.  I don't care for either one.  But people ought to be able to believe whatever they want to believe, and while I feel all religions make people less free (and therefore also less self-actualized and less universally-purposed), we cannot socially discriminate based on tribalistic beliefs but on actions.  On that grounds, in view of still existing world "Christian" empire and rest-of-world subjugation, it is Christendom which still (and historically) has more to apologize for, despite all the "love" in the holy book (and it's not all that either, far from it).  In fact, and more insidiously, what Christianity does is divorce "love" and such from their true meaning, leaving us all isolated and shaking with fear.  Islam is just more like "old testament" jealous God without all the happy talk. The bigger evil in the world is empire, and religions are just the window treatment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfqduwXVSgQ

About Mecca, will read later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTjNbT2-gmE&ab_channel=ApostateProphet

Description of Shekh Jarrah claims from Israeli perspective--critical missing information (dismisses international claims that East Jerusalem is Palestinian not Israeli, doesn't describe how current Palestinian residents were settled and that they had been promised Jordanian deeds prior to 1967, how these homes were replacement for their previous homes in West Jerusalem which was resettled by Israel in 1948, and that Jordan made their deeds official in 2021).

https://www.ngo-monitor.org/sheikh-jarrah-property-claims/?fbclid=IwAR21nRK93GkVCA6aA4mSk_k4OgTYoyg2HNZqlXBlz7eP-Oi-aoOXnHvCZsU

[article]  I can't remember what my friend said about this, but it is a protest for "co-existence" and recognition of the Palestinians between Sea and River as equals.  Organized by a communist party (Meretz) among others.  This is one of the protests I think I would approve of.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/thousands-of-jews-and-arabs-march-in-tel-aviv-for-peace-coexistence-668852?draft=true.

Gaza-Sinai state???  Later...

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/7/24/is-gaza-sinai-state-a-possibility-for-palestinians

Antisemitism report on CBS news.  All racism is deplorable, including antisemitism, and some may be occurring.  However there is no mention of anti-arab racism.  Yasha Levine, Max Blumenthal, and others have studied a number of recently alleged antisemitic incidents, including one of those shown in this segment (I think) and shown that they actually started with racism and violence from Zionists who were following the recent Free Palestine demonstrations all over USA and seeking confrontations to discredit it.  But the "antisemitic incident" reports systematically removed this prior context.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zapRkrD7R0&ab_channel=CBSEveningNews

Young women operating Israel's aeronautical spy system.  Operating the apartheid state is a full time job for everyone, no?

https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/rkH2Yb00D00?utm_source=Taboola_internal&utm_medium=organic

This is the exact incident which was deconstructed by Yasha Levine, who lives in Los Angeles.  He shows that at a critical part before the violence started, the Israel supporter making the video put the phone down, suggesting that was when the Israel supporters started throwing more than insults at some men in the protest march.  He's begging for more information.  But it could not possibly be "premeditated antisemitism" as claimed in media.  It grew out of a random incident between protestors and counter-protestors.  If there was any premeditation, it had to have been on the counter-protestor side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNTfg3A6ME4&ab_channel=FoxNews

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_ZsISE4eO4&ab_channel=TheView

Hamas official arguing on Egyptian TV that there are no Palestinians, only Arabs.  Yes, but imagine in the alternative reality where Arabs are invading New York, New Yorkers pleading with other Americans for support on American TV, "We are all Americans, just like you, with names like Jones."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwBSWN4s9JU&ab_channel=hiroshimasamitsu

TravelingIsrael guy does 3 card monte with Left, Arab, and Israel.



American law Professor Kontorovich says the settlements are not illegal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7qCZHPcXYo&ab_channel=NYSofmind

Zionist media baron starts out claiming Iran never honored JPCOA.  Actually, it was USA who never honored and then quickly broke JPCOA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1_Sf8i-cz8&t=12s&ab_channel=HonestReportingVideos

Sky News claiming Hamas deliberately attacked humanitarian aid.  However, the real story is that at least 8 or as many as 24 (different reports) aid trucks got through.  One got hit by a "rocket" causing a fire and "light injuries" to the driver who was quickly transfered to hospital and treated.  Sky News has not shown that aid truck was targeted, in fact it was not, and Hamas rockets may have had to do with Israel bombing Gaza, or not signing brokered peace deal yet, not trying to block aid trucks--context not included in broadcast. The idea that Hamas does not care about Gazan children or civilians is pure dehumanizing orientalism.  On the other hand, it could be said that all Gazans are ever more united in one purpose: freedom from Israeli blockade and persecution.  Shared suffering leads to unity.  Israelis also share some suffering, but it is vastly smaller in incidence and/or magnitude, and many if not most Israelis have options to leave at relatively little personal cost to western countries.  Finkelstein often points out that Israeli military and intelligence outposts are often near large public facilities in Israel, just as in Gaza, and Gaza is so compacted it has fewer choices to do otherwise. By the same standards that Hamas could be called a Terrorist Organization, so would Israel--if not moreso.  I would call Hamas a militarized resistance organization, and Israel an apartheid state resulting from settler colonialism.  The first is legitimate under international laws, principles, and intuitive rules of fair play, the second isn't.


Another one by the same TravelingIsrael guy about Israel itself.  Each one of his "facts" isn't a fact at all.


Ask a Palestinian, Ask an Israeli.  Sillier than Candid Camera.  But who are they asking?




Check May 16 for conflict info


Much better than the Maher appearance, this interview with Maajid Nawaz with Ayaan Hirsi Ali is just flooring.  It's dated too...Saudi Arabia has recognized Israel.  It leaves out the most important context, that both Saudi Arabia and Israel are creations of Western Imperialism.  Many Arabs wanted a Socialist or Communist state, but all such efforts were crushed by the west.  As elite as Ali makes herself sound, she is not really a scholar on the middle east, she's a politician and think tank flak with a masters degree in political science (related to Netherlands government, not middle east).  She lied on her Dutch asylum application and would have been deported except for political help.  Her family denies she had been part of an arranged marriage she claims to have been escaping from too.  Everything in this video is wrong too.

Anyway, once you understand that both Israel and Saudi Arabia are client states of the US everything else makes sense.  It is ludicrous that Saudi Arabia would have ever attacked Israel or the US.  That doesn't, of course, necessarily keep anyone from ranting and railing.  But for western intervention, all of Arabia would have likely been ruled by Hashemites, not Saudis, and ultimately perhaps communists or socialists by now.  The US, Israel, and Turkey have systematically supported extremist jihadis of various stripes to destroy the other (never mentioned) Democratic regime in the middle east, Syria.  Al Qaeda and ISIS were western creations and largely manipulated by US and Israel with internal intelligence operatives towards US/Israeli objectives in Syria--replacing it's self-determined Democratic regime with another US client state--likely Wahabi because they are easiest to align with western objectives--mostly anti-Russia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6E0lTaZPrI&ab_channel=GiladLevi-kopelman

PALwatch video showing Hamas child indoctrination.  Very hypocritical and out of context.

Talk about a culture glorifying violence, few can compare with US and Israel.  As a child in the USA, I learned to hate Communists, Russians, and Chinese.  These were all going to destroy us, therefore we must destroy them first.  They could not be trusted (see for example, "Dishonest John" in cartoons).  GI Joe was one of the most popular toys.  Violence and Militarism were widely elevated in TV and Movies in particular through direct CIA involvement we now know.  I believe Israelis and Zionist American jews are also indoctrinated with dehumanization of Palestinians and Arabs generally, in their religious schools.

Meanwhile, the function of US indoctrination system isn't really self defense, it's continuation of imperialism.  In contrast, in Gaza, a society under existential blockade, a glorification of militarism might be considered socially and ethically justified.



Here's Aayan on Maher.  The liar and the arrogant American "libertarian" exceptionalist blowhard.


















A short list of websites


Honest Reporting
UN Watch
MEMRI
Ynet