zaterdag 19 juli 2014

Zionist Fascism 62

Israel Has Been Bitten by a Bat

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Posted on Jul 18, 2014
By Lawrence Weschler

  Palestinian medics treat a wounded girl at the emergency room of the Shifa hospital in Gaza City. AP/Khalil Hamra
The news out of Israel and Palestine: relentless, remorseless, repetitively compulsive, rabid.
And I am put in mind of a passage from Norman Mailer, in 1972, in which he attempted to plumb the psychopathology behind America’s relentless bombing of Cambodia and Laos and Vietnam during the Nixon years:
... bombing [which] had become an activity as rational as the act of a man who walks across his own home town to defecate each night on the lawn of a stranger—it is the same stranger each night—such a man would not last long even if he had the most powerful body in town. “Stop,” he would scream as they dragged him away. “I need to shit on that lawn. It’s the only way to keep my body in shape, you fools. I’ve been bitten by a bat!
A species of human rabies, as Mailer had explained earlier in the same book (“St. George and the Godfather,” his account of the McGovern campaign), “and the word was just, for rabies was the disease of every virulence which was excessive to the need for self-protection.”

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I know, I know, and I am bone tired of being told it, when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is plenty of blame to go around, but by this point after coming on almost 50 years of Israeli stemwinding and procrastinatory obfuscation, I’d put the proportionate distribution of blame at about the same level as the mortality figures—which is, where are we today (what with Wednesday morning’s four children killed while out playing on a Gaza beach)? What, 280 to 2?
For the single overriding fact defining the Israeli-Palestinian impasse at this point is that if the Palestinians are quiescent and not engaged in any overt rebellion, the Israelis (and here I am speaking of the vast majority of the population who somehow go along with the antics of their leaders, year after year) manage to tell themselves that things are fine and there’s no urgent need to address the situation; and if, as a result, the endlessly put-upon Palestinians do finally rise up in any sort of armed resistance (rocks to rockets), the same Israelis exasperate, “How are we supposed to negotiate with monsters like this?” A wonderfully convenient formula, since it allows the Israelis to go blithely on, systematically stealing Palestinian land in the West Bank, and continuing to confine 1.8 million Gazans within what might well be described as a concentration camp.
Note, incidentally, I say “concentration camp” and not “death camp.” I am not comparing Gaza to Auschwitz-Birkenau, but one cannot help but liken the conditions today in Gaza to the sorts of conditions once faced by Japanese-Americans during World War II, or the Boers in South Africa during the Anglo-Boer War, or the black South Africans years later in such besieged townships as Soweto, or for that matter Jews and gays and gypsies at Dachau and Theresienstadt in the years before the Nazis themselves settled on their Final Solution.
And it is quite simply massively self-serving delusion that Israelis (and their enablers and abettors here in America, among whom incidentally I count a steadily declining number of American Jews) refuse to recognize that fact. The backbone of Zionist AIPAC-like electoral strength in the U.S. today is rooted among Protestant evangelicals and other instrumentalist neocons, and I suspect that Israel will one day come to rue that fact.
I’m tired, for example, of hearing about how vital and cosmopolitan and democratic are the streets and cafes and nightclubs of Tel Aviv. For the fact is that one simply can’t sustain such cosmopolitan vitality 40 miles from a prison camp containing close to 2 million people: It’s a contradiction in terms. One that in the end (and we may fast be coming to the end of this game) will have completely twisted and disfigured the lives of those who go on trying to sustain it.
I know the Israelis need to protect themselves in a dangerous neighborhood, blah, blah, blah, but (leaving aside the fact that you don’t get to call it “self-defense” when you are occupying or besieging someone else’s land), can there be any doubt that in the end the Israelis’ own security will depend on how they treat their Palestinian brothers?
And I’m tired, finally, of hearing people marveling at the insane sectarian rifts between Shiites and Sunnis, or Serbs and Bosnians, or Tutsis and Hutus, as if they themselves could never fall into such primordial, atavistic blood feuds. For what else is the Palestinian/Israeli divide at this point, these two Semitic Peoples of the Book, than just one more inchoate, incomprehensible, sectarian vendetta?
In short: rabies.


Robert Parry 3


The Human Price of Neocon Havoc


Exclusive: Neocons are the “masters of chaos” as they destabilize disfavored governments around the world. But real people pay the price as we’ve seen with Israel’s slaughter of four boys on a Gaza beach and an apparent shoot-down of a Malaysian airliner over war-torn Ukraine, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry

Whether the tragedy is four boys getting blown apart while playing on a beach in Gaza or nearly 300 killed from a suspected missile strike on a Malaysian Airliner over Ukraine or the thousands upon thousands of other innocent victims slaughtered in Iraq, Syria, Libya and other recent war zones, the underlying lesson is that the havoc encouraged by America’s neocons results in horrendous loss of human life.
While clearly other players share in this blame, including the soldiers on the ground and the politicians lacking the courage to compromise, the principal culprits in the bloodshed of the past dozen years have been the neoconservatives and their “liberal interventionist” allies who can’t seem to stop stirring up trouble in the name of “democracy” and “human rights.”
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.
Rather than work out reasonable – albeit imperfect – compromises with various foreign leaders, the neocons and their liberal allies insist on ratcheting up demands to such unrealistic levels that conflict becomes inevitable and the outcomes are almost always catastrophic.
In Iraq in 2003, the neocons and many liberal fellow-travelers insisted that the only acceptable solution was the violent removal of Saddam Hussein through an unprovoked U.S. invasion. Though Hussein was ousted and hanged, the collateral damage included hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, including many children, along with the complete destabilization of the country.
In Syria and Libya, many of the same U.S. actors – although in this case led by the liberal “responsibility-to-protect” crowd – pushed for the overthrow of the existing governments, supposedly to save lives and spread democracy.
In Libya, the U.S.-led air war did cause Muammar Gaddafi to be overthrown and murdered but the ensuing chaos has led to many more deaths, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, plus the spread of Islamic militancy across the region.
In Syria, the U.S.-backed “regime change” bid failed to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad but the resulting chaos has left more than 100,000 people killed and has given rise to an ultra-violent jihadist group called the Islamic State, which first emerged from the U.S.-created war in Iraq and has now boomeranged back onto Iraq as the jihadists have seized major cities and spurred more sectarian killings.
But there may be a method to the apparent neocon madness. The neocons have always been committed to protecting Israel and enabling its oppression of Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza. Indeed, one can understand pretty much every confrontational policy pushed by the neocons as being designed to serve Israeli interests.
These “regime change” schemes can be directly traced to the work of prominent U.S. neocons on Benjamin Netanyahu’s 1996 campaign for Israeli prime minister. Rather than continuing inconclusive negotiations with the Palestinians, Netanyahu’s neocon advisers – including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and Mevray Wurmser – advocated an aggressive new approach, called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.”
Essentially, the neocon thinking arose from Israeli frustration over negotiations with the Palestinians. The Israelis were angry at Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the militant group Hamas as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah. So the “clean break” scratched negotiations and replaced talking with “regime change” in countries supporting those groups, whether Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Syria under the Assad dynasty or Iran, a leading benefactor of Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.
Two years later, in 1998, came the neocon Project for the New American Century’s call for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. PNAC was founded by neocon luminaries William Kristol and Robert Kagan. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War.”]
Helpful Chaos
Though many of the neocon plans have not worked out as advertised – the promised “cakewalk” in Iraq turned into a bloody slog – the neocon strategy could still be labeled a success if the actual intent was to destabilize and weaken Middle Eastern countries that were perceived as threats to Israel.
Through that lens, it’s not entirely bad that old sectarian hatreds have been revived, pitting Sunni against Shiite and ripping apart societies such as Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. In the end, the regional chaos has helped Prime Minister Netanyahu starve the Palestinians of the financial support that they once had, supposedly making them more susceptible to whatever demands the Israelis choose to make. And it has given Netanyahu a freer hand to engage in periodic slaughters of Gazan militants, a process that Israelis call “mowing the grass.”
When the 1.7 million Palestinians packed into the Gaza Strip lash out at their Israeli oppressors – as they periodically do – the neocons who remain very influential in Official Washington are quick to dominate the U.S. media, justifying whatever levels of violence that Netanyahu chooses to inflict. But raining bombs down on this densely populated area is sure to kill many children and other innocents.
On Wednesday, the Israeli military targeted a shed on the beach in Gaza. According to reports, the first missile hit the shed and killed one small boy playing in the vicinity. When three other boys began running, the Israelis blew them away with a second rocket. New York Times photographer Tyler Hicks explained the events this way:
“A small shack atop a sea wall at the fishing port had been struck by an Israeli bomb or missile and was burning. A young boy emerged from the smoke, running toward the adjacent beach. I grabbed my cameras and was putting on body armor and a helmet when, about 30 seconds after the first blast, there was another. The boy I had seen running was now dead, lying motionless in the sand, along with three other boys who had been playing there.”
Presumably, the Israeli pilots or whoever targeted the missile deserve the immediate blame for this atrocity. But the far-worse criminals are the Israeli leaders who refuse to address the longstanding injustices inflicted on the Palestinian people. Also, sharing in this crime are the American neocons who justify whatever Israel does.
Similarly, it has been the neocons and their “liberal interventionist” allies who have been stoking the crisis in Ukraine in part out of a desire to drive a wedge between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has assisted Obama in defusing crises in Syria and Iran, two areas where the neocons hoped to engineer more “regime change.”
By last September, leading neocons, such as National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, had identified Ukraine as the geopolitical instrument for punishing Putin. Gershman deemed Ukraine “the biggest prize” and hoped that grabbing it for the Western sphere of influence might undercut Putin at home as well.
Gershman’s NED funded scores of Ukrainian political and media organizations while Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland estimated that the U.S. government had invested $5 billion in the cause of pulling Ukraine into the West. Nuland, a neocon holdover who had been a top adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, is the wife of PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan.
Nuland went so far as to show up at mass demonstrations in Kiev’s Maidan Square passing out cookies to the protesters, while neocon Sen. John McCain stood with the far-right Svoboda Party – under a banner honoring Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera – to urge on the protesters to challenge elected President Viktor Yanukovych. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What the Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]
Wreaking Havoc
The political crisis in Ukraine reached a boiling point Feb. 20-22 as the demonstrations turned increasingly violent and the death toll among police and protesters mounted. On Feb. 21, three European foreign ministers reached an agreement with Yanukovych in which he agreed to limit his powers and accept early elections to vote him out of office. He also pulled back the police, as Vice President Joe Biden had demanded.
At that point, however, well-trained neo-Nazi militias – organized in brigades of 100 – took the offensive, seizing government buildings and forcing Yanukovych’s officials to flee for their lives. Instead of trying to enforce the Feb. 21 agreement, which would have safeguarded Ukraine’s constitutional process, the U.S. State Department cheered the unlawful ouster of Yanukovych and quickly recognized the coup regime as “legitimate.”
The Feb. 22 coup set in motion a train of other events as “ethnically pure” Ukrainians in the west were pitted against ethnic Russians in the east and south. The crisis grew bloodier as the ethnic Russians resisted what they regarded as an illegitimate regime in Kiev.
Meanwhile, the U.S. mainstream press – always enthralled to the neocons – pushed a false narrative about Ukraine that put nearly all the blame on Putin, though he clearly was reacting to provocations instigated by the West, not the other way around.
Still, the neocons achieved one of their chief goals, alienating Obama from Putin and making the two leaders’ collaboration on Syria, Iran and other trouble spots more unlikely. In other words, the neocons have kept alive hope that those problems won’t be resolved through compromise, but rather might still lead to more warfare.
While some Machiavellians might admire this neocon “always-say-die” determination, the human consequences can be quite severe. For instance, the violence in eastern Ukraine may have led to the Thursday crash of a Malaysian Airliner flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with all 295 people onboard killed.
It was not immediately clear which side in the fighting – if any – was responsible for the suspected shoot-down of the plane. The various parties to the conflict all denied responsibility. But it would not be the first time that an international conflict has contributed to the destruction of a civilian airliner.
On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over Iranian territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people onboard, after apparently mistaking the airliner for a warplane.
While Ukraine’s new President Petro Poroshenko was quick to call the crash “a terrorist act” – and implicitly blame the ethnic Russian rebels – the reality is almost assuredly that it was an accident (assuming that a missile did bring down the airliner). Presumably, the same is true about the Israeli twin missile strikes killing those four boys on a beach in Gaza. The Israeli military most likely misjudged their ages.
But the overriding lesson from these tragedies should be that the real villains are people who opt for chaos and war over progress and peace. And, in the case of the Middle East and Ukraine, the greatest purveyors of this unnecessary warfare are America’s neocons.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

vrijdag 18 juli 2014

Zionist Fascism 61

Action Alert

After filing moving first-hand reports on the deaths of 4 Palestinian children, NBC News pulled one of their star reporters from Gaza. Why are they obstructing good journalism now, just as the ground invasion begins?

Why did NBC pull this senior reporter from Gaza?
Tell NBC News Prez Deborah Turness: Let Ayman Mohyeldin report from Gaza 
Take Action!

Facebook Twitter icon 

Dear Stan,
After ten days of bombarding Gaza, the Israeli military has killed 230 Palestinians, 80% of them civilians. And now they have begun a ground invasion that they promise will be even "messier.”
While all of us at JVP are working around the clock to stop this unfolding disaster—and will keep you posted regularly—NBC news just made our work a whole lot harder by pulling from Gaza Ayman Mohyeldin, one of the most respected, experienced correspondents covering this crisis.
Unless we act now, we may lose some of the most balanced, fair and accurate reporting on Gaza in any mainstream news network. Please tell NBC to let Mohyeldin report from Gaza. 
Mohyeldin was removed from his post yesterday, shortly after he filed moving eyewitness reports on Israel’s killing of four Palestinian boys on a Gaza beach.(1) He was the most experienced reporter – and the only Arabic speaker - NBC had covering Gaza.
NBC claims it was for Mohyeldin’s security, but they immediately sent in another reporter with less experience. And while there is a long history of intimidating media outlets that report fairly on Israel and Palestine, we can’t say what NBC executives’ real motives were.
But this isn’t just about Ayman Mohyeldin. It goes to the very core of how the United States continues to unconditionally support Israel’s decades-old assault on Palestinian land, livelihoods, and lives. The electorate can’t question US support of Palestinian dispossession if they only know one side--the Israeli government side. Which is why we need to stand up and support fair and balanced reporting now. 
American complicity in Israel's ongoing and current assault on Palestinians is deep: we send 3 billion dollars in unconditional military aid each year. Our tax dollars bought the mortar fired at those four children yesterday, and supplied the tanks that are rolling toward Rafah right now.
In spite of what most U.S. reporters say, there is no symmetry in a one-sided war between a military superpower, backed by the US, and an imprisoned civilian population. 
Let's insist we get to hear the real truth of Israel's war on Palestinian civiliansBecause the truth is, there's no way to stop a war we cannot see. Tell NBC today. 
Onward,
Stefanie Fox
Director of Organizing
(1) You can see the report Mohyeldin filed on that attack here

Geen Jorwert zonder Brussel 7

Outrage as France become first country in world to ban pro-Palestine demos

  • Move follows violence at protests in Paris last weekend
  • Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said there was a 'threat to public order'
  • Thousands across France were set to march again this weekend
  • Anyone who breaks the ban faces a year in prison and a 15,000 euro fine.
  • If they hide their faces the sentence can be increased to three years jail, and a 45,000 euro fine
France's Socialist government provoked outrage today by becoming the first in the world to ban protests against Israeli action in Palestine.
In what is viewed as an outrageous attack on democracy, Socialist Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said mass demonstrations planned for the weekend should be halted.
Mr Cazeneuve said there was a ‘threat to public order’, while opponents said he was ‘criminalising’ popular support of the Palestinian people. 
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators take to the streets of Paris on Sunday. France's socialist government has sparked uproar after it banned protests against Israeli action in Palestine
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators take to the streets of Paris on Sunday. France's socialist government has sparked uproar after it banned protests against Israeli action in Palestine
Thousands were set to march against the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, calling for an immediate end to hostilities in which civilians including many children have been killed.
 
But Mr Cazeneuve fears there might be a repeat of the fights between ‘ultra’ Jewish vigilantes and pro-Palestinians which happened after a demonstration last Sunday.
Referring to the main Paris march, Mr Cazeneuve said: ‘I consider that the conditions are not right to guarantee security.’
Socialist Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve fears there might be a repeat of the fights between Jewish vigilantes and pro-Palestinians which happened after a demonstration last Sunday
Socialist Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve fears there might be a repeat of the fights between Jewish vigilantes and pro-Palestinians which happened after a demonstration last Sunday
He welcomed a legal procedure instigated by the Paris police prefecture to ban the march, despite it already being widely advertised.
Anyone who turns up to an illegal demonstration now faces up to a year in prison, and a 15,000 euro fine.
If they hide their faces to avoid being identified, this sentence can be increased to three years, and a 45,000 fine.
Even those who publish details of an illegal rally on social media face up to a year in prison, and a 15,000 euro fine. 
This can be increased to seven years and a 100,000 fine if the postings lead to violence.
Mr Cazeneuve also advised other prefects across France to examine planned marches on a ‘case by case’ basis, and to ban ‘if appropriate’. 
But Michele Sibony, of the Jewish Union for Peace, said: ‘By outlawing free speech by pro-Palestinian demonstrators, France puts itself in a unique position in the world and Europe.’
And Youssef Boussoumah, of the Party of the Indigenous of the Republic (PIR) said: ‘France is criminalising any show of solidarity with the Palestinian people. 
‘This is an absolute outrage, it is a continuation of attempts to muzzle the Palestinian people and to get them and their supporters in France to surrender absolutely to Israel's oppression.’
Sylvie Perrot, another pro-Palestine activist from Paris, said: ‘Fascist states stop people demonstrating against wars – it is beyond belief that French Socialists are following their example.’
There were false claims made last week that synagogues in Paris had been targeted by pro-Palestinian demonstrators. 
In fact videos showed armed vigilantes from a group called the Jewish Defence League (LDJ) baiting demonstrators into fights. 
A protester wearing a gas mask holds a fake rocket during protests in Paris over the weekend
A protester wearing a gas mask holds a fake rocket during protests in Paris over the weekend
A pro-Palestinian demonstrator shouts anti Israeli slogans in Paris on Sunday. The French government is attempting to prevent planned marches this weekend from going ahead
A pro-Palestinian demonstrator shouts anti Israeli slogans in Paris on Sunday. The French government is attempting to prevent planned marches this weekend from going ahead
There were no arrests among the LDJ, despite them fighting and smashing up property in full view of the police. 
Six pro-Palestine protestors were arrested for a variety of public order offences, but none had been anywhere near Paris synagogues, which remained undamaged. 
A judicial enquiry is set to be launched into the false allegations made about the synagogue attacks – ones which people claim were made up to demonise supporters of Palestine by associating them with anti-Semitism. 
On Friday night lawyers for a number of groups hoping to campaign on behalf of Palestine on Saturday lodged an appeal against the ban in a Paris court.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2697194/Outrage-France-country-world-ban-pro-Palestine-demos.html#ixzz37r9Q2taw
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Nederlandse Racistische Hypocrisie 2

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The New Age of Global Paranoia: Russia, Ukraine, and the Plane Crash

Collateral damage from Ukraine's civil war: The 21st century takes another sharp turn into the unfriendly unknown.
 
 
 
The catastrophic destruction of any passenger jet always hits a hot nerve of modern existential angst. The reality of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, shot down while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with around 300 passengers and crew, is infinitely worse. The speed with which both the Ukrainian government and Russian-backed separatists denied responsibility — and accused each other of being the guilty party — tells us something critical. The course of history turns on events like these. How blame gets apportioned can swing the fate of nations.
In a week already full of terrible reports from Gaza, the news Thursday morning that a Ukrainian government official had accused the separatists of shooting down MH17 provoked a different kind of gasp. The ongoing horror in Palestine confirms a preexisting sense of intractable despair, but it doesn’t tell us anything that we don’t already know about the Mideast. What just happened in the Ukraine signifies a new morass of uncertainty and inevitable escalation. The geopolitical consequences are incalculable.
Vladimir Putin’s political future, the survival of Ukraine as a state, the question of whether other European nations and the United States get drawn more deeply into the conflict — anything and everything seems possible. As recently as Wednesday, the U.S. had announced sanctions on Russia tied to its military support of the Ukrainian rebels. As the relevant parties fight over who is to blame for the destruction of MH17, Cold War tensions are relentlessly heating up.
How that plays out, again, is anyone’s guess. But here’s what we do know: An already anxious world is sure to get more jittery. We’ve seen what happens after previous shocks to the global nervous system. 9/11 changed the psychology of a nation — changed our laws, the way we travel, the way our government spies on its citizens. We didn’t feel safe, so we became paranoid, with lasting effect.
The destruction, in a regional military conflict, of a commercial jetliner that might have included a number of Americans and Europeans as its passengers will further stoke close-to-the-breaking-point paranoia. Adding a fully invigorated neo-Cold-War showdown to American anxieties about terrorism could further inflame nationalist fevers on both sides of the Atlantic. We gasp, because our world just lurched again, and the only thing we can be sure of is that there are more lurches to come.
* * *
It’s easy to understand why, for many people, the initial reaction to MH17′s destruction was “oh shit.” It feels like an inflection point, like a moment when the narrative shifts. Thursday afternoon, a remarkable infographic of international flights that had suddenly shifted their flight patterns to avoid Ukrainian space provided a disturbing illustration of global panic. Yes, we knew the Ukraine was a hot zone before today, but now it’s something else. Now, in the minds of observers around the world, it is a charnel house.
Of course, we don’t know for sure that this moment is of actual world-historical import. When the archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot by Gavrilo Princip, no one knew that the most horrific global military conflict the world had ever seen would follow. When Lyndon Johnson took advantage of (or orchestrated) a naval battle with the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin to convince Congress to authorize an escalated military effort in Southeast Asia, no one could have guessed that the ensuing war would lead to his own downfall. As we watched the Twin Towers collapse, did we think that our own civil liberties would soon come under assault? Did we imagine that 13 years later we would be taking off our shoes to go through security lines?
Let’s game this out. For international air travelers, there’s a new source of terror — the possibility that they might be purposely targeted not just by hijackers or suicidal terrorists but randomly fired upon by missiles from a conflict zone. For Vladimir Putin, there’s the clear prospect that his reckless support of the separatists has blown back on him in the worst way. For Barack Obama, it’s yet another disintegrating international catastrophe with no easy answers.
The Ukraine will call for more Western support. Senator John McCain is already on the record calling for the U.S. to “react in stringent fashion” if “Ukrainian rebels” are found responsible. But there’s scant evidence that Putin has ever been willing to back down, no matter how badly he’s boxed in, so any U.S. escalation will surely be met by a Russian hard line.
Commercial airliners will seek their own solutions. No-fly zones will proliferate. Israel, for its part, is supposed to be equipping its commercial airliners with anti-missile systems;imagine that, a future in which the skies are filled with weaponized passenger jets? That future is almost now.
Remember the end of history? The triumph of capitalist liberal democracies over the failed socialist experiment? The deeper we get into the 21st century the more insecure that supposed victory feels. A more terrified world is a world that justifies more surveillance, more hatred towards the alien other, more controls on movement and association.
History doesn’t end. It staggers forward, fitfully, like a drunk bully. And maybe that explains the sick feeling that accompanied the news from Ukraine. Three hundred innocent people dying is horror enough. The certainty that the consequences of this event will lead us places we don’t want to go is even worse.