Category Archives: Current Affairs

Israel, Hamas, Palestinians, Terror, and Power

Current Affairs, Israel, Uncategorized, War

Surely, the most chilling part of the film is an audio-only clip: a terrorist calling home to tell his parents that he is in Israel and killing Jews — 10, he boasts, including a woman whose phone he is using. “Their blood is on my hands,” he cries, joyously. “Your son’s a hero.” Charles Lane, a Washington Post column writer, describes a collection of film clips made by Hamas agents and shown by the Israeli Embassy.

The Hamas killers who attacked Israeli unarmed men, women, children, and babies are cowards. Yes, they are also unbelievably nasty homicidal maniacs driven by hate and fear, but at their core, they are cowards. Their hate and anger are so strong, so pervasive, that it has oozed out and corroded them as human beings. Israel has released a series of clips made by the Hamas killers themselves, and it is ugly. They are ugly people who, somehow, think they are heroes because they killed helpless people. There must be a better word than disgusting when describing such inhumane behavior, but none comes to mind.

I like to think that I am a practical guy, not necessarily in my real life but in my giving advice to countries-that-didn’t-ask life; even though I am a liberal, I think that my solutions – answers? opinions? – for most of those, and our country’s problems are based on practicability rather than how liberal they are. In that vain, I think what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank is wrong. Wrong because it will not solve the problem. When I say solve the problem, I am assuming that most – with most being the operative word here – Israelis want to live in peace, and I don’t think stealing land from the Palestinians for Jewish settlements in the West Bank and bombing the shit out Palestinians in Gaza will result in long-term peace.

I keep reading about the Israeli-Hamas War as if it were a real war. But it is not a war any more than the October 27, 2018, Pittsburgh synagogue slaughter was a shoot-out. On the first day, Hamas’ cowardly attack killed about 1,200 people and injured 6,900 others. Israel killed that many Palestinians in the first half an hour of their retaliation. According to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, as of December 30, 2023, the death toll in Gaza is 27,681 civilians, including bout 9,077 children.

When this is over, the majority of the survivors will be beaten into submission, but not all and not forever. A sizable number of survivors will join Hamas, or the next Hamas-like resistance movement, willing to kill and die for what they consider a just cause. The numbers that I see don’t paint a promising picture for Israel: there are about 6.8 million Jewish people living in Israel and 2.5 million Arabs – whatever that means – and 5.35 million self-identified Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank of what, for all practical purposes, is now greater Israel.

As I sit here staring at my computer screen, I realize that I have been here before, and I’ve written about this over and over again. (The Tragedy of Israel. Israel in the West Bank.) The difference, I guess, if there is any difference, is how the world is reacting. Increasingly, the world is acknowledging the deaths of Palestinians. Today’s Washington Post’s front page had an article that started, Settlers killed a Palestinian teen. Israeli forces didn’t stop it. A review of the deadliest settler attack in the West Bank since the war began shows how increasingly violent tactics have gone unpunished. Today’s Los Angeles Times front page says – asks? – Is Israel’s treatment of Palestinians a form of apartheid?… Video appears to show Israeli army shooting 3 Palestinians, killing 1, without provocation. Right now, the Israelis seem to be reacting to that by killing pro-Palestinian journalists who are acting as witnesses, still the world does seem to be changing.

That this can not be the way Israelis want to be seen by the world gives me some hope.

Afghanistan & White Lotus

Cars, Current Affairs, Politics, Uncategorized, War

This has been maybe the largest evacuation in US history, 50k evacuated and more to come without hostages or causalities. Yet the media continues to hammer Biden and refuses to acknowledge the important work his administration has done in the past week. Tweet by Ilhan Omar @IlhanMNMom, Refugee and Congresswoman for #MN05. Progressive Caucus Whip. Fighting for a more just world. Join our grassroots funded progressive movement

If you compare the capacity to make agreements of colleagues and partners, then the Taliban have long seemed to me far more capable than the Kabul puppet government, The Russian Director of the Second Department of Asia of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zamir Kabulov, on state TV.  

This has been a disturbing week, with the grey skies only hinting at the fires burning out of control in the background, and, in the foreground, all week, the Delta variant and the tragic collapse of Afghanistan. I haven’t seen videos of the collapse, I’ve only seen stills of the traumatized crowds, but the fear and desperation come through. These are people who trusted us and believed us, believed in us, and many, got rich off of us. Now these people’s lives are in danger, at least that’s what we’re constantly told, and surely, some of their lives are in danger, although probably not all. Still, all of these desperate people will not continue to live the life they have become accustomed to, probably not even a decent life, if they stay in Afghanistan.

By the State Department and the Pentagon’s estimate, there are somewhere around 10,000 to 15,000 Americans living and working in Afghanistan. I find that shocking, in two different ways. One, that is a lot of people and what are they all doing? And, two, we really have no idea how many Americans are working and living in Afghanistan? It turns out that Americans going to Afghanistan are encouraged but not required to check in with the embassy. Operation Get the Hell of Afghanistan started out as a debacle but all involved seem to be on a pretty steep learning curve and it seems many if not most of the people who want out will be able to actually get out. Apparently, the US and the Taliban have made a deal and the Taliban agreed not to shoot at people trying to get out (although, at some point, they’ll realize that the people leaving are the people who run the city and they might change their mind).

For the week before this one, as Kabuk fell, we made the mistake of spending our ample spare time watching White Lotus on HBO and The War Machine with Brad Pitt channeling General Stanley McChrystal futilely trying to nation-build in Afghanistan during the Obama years. I knew The War Machine would be painful and, I guess, I wanted to wallow in my righteous anger but White Lotus was a shock. Very roughly, it is an Upstairs Downstairs sort of movie that takes place at a high-end resort in Hawaii but, watching it as Kabul fell, it seemed like a thinly veiled allegory of Afghanistan. At the end, all I could think about was those poor, poor, people dealing with us rich, pampered, White people.

It got me thinking; Have we Europeans ever colonized – or, if you prefer, Gone in to help. – a country and actually improved it? Sure, I know we brought in technology and medicine which improved the lives of billions of people. But we didn’t have to conquer the country to do that. Nobody ever conquered and colonized China and they seem to be doing fine. We are so sure that our way is the right way; no, not the right way, the only right way that we are blind to the damage we have done, are doing.

The FBI has raided Trump’s attorney, or, officially, the office and home of Michael Cohen

Current Affairs, Politics

I want to start with The FBI is out to get Trump (and back pedal from there). Trump slandered the FBI throughout his campaign and – and there is no better way to say this – fucked over the FBI ever since he has been President. The fact that he has actually done this ignores one of life’s cardinal axioms,  You can’t fight City Hall and it makes me wonder Why would he do this? I can come up with a theory on the slandering during the election part; he may have thought that it gave him street cred as an outsider – especially compared to Hillary Clinton, who he kept saying, was left off easy by the FBI because she was an insider – it gave the message that his campaign was not just against the Democrats but against the unfair and unresponsive insider government itself, and it was a pre-excuse for why he lost, if he did lose, which, a lot of evidence seems to show, Trump expected. But, once Trump was elected President, Why did he go out of his way to alienate the FBI?. I don’t know but I’ve got a half-baked theory.

Going all the back to 1973, Trump has acted as if he were above the law and reacted to problems by suing and then, often, settling. In that first year, 1973, he was sued by the Department of Justice for housing discrimination and he sued back for 100 million dollars. They settled and he, essentially, agreed to follow the law. As an aside, he didn’t follow the law and he was sued again for breaking the settlement agreement. End aside. Since then, Trump has defended about 1,450 lawsuits and usually settled for less than he would have had to pay if he had honored the agreement (he has also sued about 1,900 times). I think that this has left him with the belief that laws are malleable and law enforcement pretty weak.

Trump has been referred to as a businessman and, while he has been in business, he is not an organizational chart kind of businessman with the kind of checks and balances that implies. He is more of a mafia-type businessman in which he is the absolute monarch at the center of an organization. It was easy for Trump to confused loyalty to him with virtue so that anybody who is not loyal to him is, de facto, not virtuous and shouldn’t be in the organization. He has never had a Board of Directors to moderate his impulses, and, one thing for sure, he is impulsive. That those impulses have largely worked out in the past has emboldened him. The FBI with its loyalty to its own rules and procedures is never going to be loyal enough to Trump for Trump; that aggravates him and he lashes out. Why not? He is now more powerful than ever. 

People join the FBI for all kinds of different reasons, to help make society safer, to bring criminals to justice, for some, it is a safe government job and for some, it is a way and place to feel powerful, to feel dominant. I once heard an interview with an L.A. gang member, in talking about the anti-gang unit, he said: “They are the biggest, most powerful, gang; they always win.” Well, the biggest, most powerful except for the FBI.

The FBI embodies the same desires as its agents, it wants to make America safer, jail criminals, and it wants to be dominant, it wants to be the most effective law enforcement agency in the world. This is not an organization that takes criticism well, especially fake criticism. Trump has picked a fight with the biggest gang in the country and it is already not going well for him. To show how serious this is, the FBI has even broken through the client/attorney privilege. That must not have been easy, they had to prove to a judge that they were looking for something, not just fishing for anything, but looking for a specific something that they had a good reason to think they would find in Michael Cohen’s office. In the process, they must now have all his hard drives, and our hard drives know even more about us than Facebook. 

Guns, guns, guns

Americana, Current Affairs

“The adults have failed us.” A student on a Facebook clip I can no longer find.

I’m thrilled and actually surprised, that, at long last, somebody is protesting the NRA and their program of guns and more guns for all no matter how many people get killed. I’m surprised and actually thrilled that it is the children that had to finally do it. That unknown student is right, our generation, my generation, have failed those who are following us in almost every way; Global Warming, Environmental Degradation, Income Inequality, Unsafe Schools – let alone good schools – Deteriorating Infrastructure, Perpetual war, to name a few ways.  

Maybe it is always the young people who bring change but high school age children seem younger than usual to me. On the other hand, they are the ones who have to live in this brave new world. Hooray for them!