War

Challenging relentless, misguided wars and military waste

The discussion here continues on from my commentary on the parlous state of civil liberties and the ill treatment of refugees in Australia, where the authoritarianism and lack of compassion shown by our governments, which so often are "justified" by fearmongering about national security & terrorism, actually illustrate the dark nature of our own leaders and institutions.

Ironically, even if one accepted that the West was fighting for a "free society" (which in 2024 is self evidently not true), then as Australian and other global leaders repeat the same moronic slogans whilst curtailing our freedoms in the name of security, they essentially hand victory to the terrorists.  Worse, as they pursue ineffective prevention strategies that attempt to "deradicalise" potential violent extremists, they continue a failed "war on terror" that actually encourages terrorism, whilst ignoring the true, underlying causes of terrorism (instead of listening to understand those who have turned to violence) — which is not Islam in itself, or Muslims, who defy ISIS in their millions (although we must support free-speech and also listen openly to understand the views of those who see "Islamic extremists" as a problem, as long as we avoid giving them a platform to incite violence).

Whatever the Quran says (I haven't read it but I understand it is principally a book of peace, at least as much as Christianity in practice), it just doesn't make sense to suggest that an otherwise reasonable person will decide to commit atrocious terror attacks because of what they've read in a book (& even if a terrorist claims they're motivated by their readings, the real problem is their mental health & potentially traumatic history, rather than a book).

Far more plausible causes of terrorist actions are decades of resentment built up from Western foreign policies, especially the long history (confirmed by declassified files) of British exploitation of the Middle East (particularly Iran), along with ongoing political/military interference from the USA that leads to constant war and oppression of people, courtesy of US arms-sales to tyrannical governments like Saudi Arabia (amongst the 36 of the world's 49 dictatorships receiving US military support in 2015-16) — with the vast flow of US weapons also sometimes finding their way to groups who turn them back on the US.

It is the far-reaching and disastrous consequences of (strategically incompetent) Western interference — supporting revolutions/regime-changes and engaging in ill-conceived wars — that impacts religion in these regions, rather than religion itself that has fuelled anti-Western feelings and ultimately spawned antagonistic governments and a series of new terrorist groups.

Yet we're supposed to believe that the Islamic motivation for retaliation is that "they hate our freedoms" & "culture"?! — rather than the much more understandable reasons actually articulated by Bin Laden, which are, of course, primarily opposition to US imperialism and oppression & exploitation of Muslims & resources in the Middle East, including US support for Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian lands (that was originally enabled by France & Britain).

But unrepentant & undeterred, the West's response is to launch further illegal wars based on lies (spread especially by Israeli Prime Ministers), with the invasion of Iraq killing many hundreds of thousands of people and the broader US-led wars in the region directly killing almost or over a million people across the Middle East in retaliation for the 3,000 Americans killed in "9/11", plus an additional 3.5 million people dying from indirect effects and over 38 million people displaced from their homes, whilst costing Americans at least $8 trillion.

Not surprisingly, this doesn't bring peace, and US bombing continues and spreads to Syria (apparently even using white phosphorus on populated areas in Syria & Iraq), resulting in ever more refugees that the West doesn't want — as demonstrated with stunning hypocrisy by President Trump as he sought to ban refugees from these countries (enabled by public ignorance & disinterest that's reinforced by mainstream media, which – in stark contrast to any terrorist attack on a Western democracy – pays little concern or attention to the US-backed violence that's responsible for so much more human suffering).

And whilst US-led wars force some 7 million people from their home nations, Western politicians seek political advantage by demonising the desperate refugees & asylum seekers they've created — often (in Australia & the UK) based on lies & secrecy, with cruel and illegal treatment.

Yet far from retreating and ending its "forever wars" after the mayhem created in the Middle East, the US ramps up its pursuit of global hegemony (and "full-spectrum dominance") by provoking Russia with years of antagonistic NATO expansionism (as admitted by the head of NATO and breaking explicit reassurances the US gave to Russia in communication with Gorbachev in 1990) that involved abandoning weapons control treaties and stationing missiles within short range of Russia, whilst conducting widespread interference in eastern Europe, including enabling a coup in Ukraine that triggered ongoing civil war — the consequence of a divided country with historical connections to Russia that Western leaders chose to ignore.  Then as opportunities to improve relations were further weakened by EU obstructionism to greater economic integration with Russia, the subsequent, entirely predictable Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is dishonestly labelled "unprovoked" as the US gets the proxy war it sought (and recklessly escalates the risk of nuclear armageddon) — a war that could easily have been avoided (or stopped within a month) if NATO were willing to negotiate as JFK would have (especially if the US was genuinely concerned for the citizens of these countries and willing to consider potential solutions "outside the box").

Consequently, hundreds of thousands of soldiers are sent to pointless deaths, whilst the rest of Ukraine's population and Europe's economy suffer severely, not least due to Ukraine & the US sabotaging Europe's gas supplies (US Navy vessels were seen over Russia's Nord Stream pipelines days before their bombing), and probably also destroying the Nova Kakhovka dam, all with the cover of silence from Western media — which abruptly switched to one-sided propaganda mode as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, as the media and politicians almost universally deny the West's role in provoking Russia (contrary to all evidence, including "the enormous surge in Ukrainian ceasefire violations immediately prior to the invasion"), whilst uncritically praising Ukraine's President Zelensky as a defender of freedom & democracy (even though he refused to hold presidential elections due in March 2024, and instead runs an authoritarian regime under martial law).

But it seems this isn't enough war for the US, so in parallel the West demonises and beats the drums of war against China (even as the US surrounds it with military bases and bullies Western allies to take sides), based on distorted accusations of a Chinese military buildup (even though China demonstrably poses no threat, in stark contrast to the US) and, as always, fully backed by mainstream media fearmongering.

This relentless warmongering cannot end well...

US military bases (2016)

≈ 4,000 in the USA & 1,000 overseas

Palestine Is Still The Issue

After a long history of European and especially British imperialism throughout the Middle East, Africa, India & elsewhere, the founding of Israel in 1947/48 marked a new phase of European settler-colonialism.  Prior to that, Britain had allowed a wave of Jewish European immigration into Palestine, partly due to pressure from the 1933 Haavara Agreement between Zionists & Nazi Germany, which ironically undermined the Jewish-led 1933 international anti-Nazi boycott.  Quite understandably after centuries of Jewish persecution, Zionists already believed that antisemitism was so deeply ingrained in Europe that they needed a Jewish state as a safe haven.  In 1896, the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, suggested Palestine or Argentina, with the latter considered an option due to its fertile lands and small population at that time.  Similarly to the "terra nullius" (nobody's land) lie used by the British to commit genocide of Aboriginal Australians, the Zionist claim on Palestine adopted the false slogan of, "A land without a people for a people without a land".  Then after the horrors of the WWII Holocaust, with independence for Palestine having been frustrated by Zionists and violence, Britain – "protecting its own interests from the Suez Canal to Iraq" – offered up Palestinian lands (that it had no moral right to give away) to Jewish European migrants through an absurd UN Plan that left Palestine as three disconnected areas of land — which was rightly opposed in the 1947 UN Resolution 181 by every single country in the region (and notably with the UK abstaining).  The subsequent self-declared establishment of Israel as a Jewish State in 1948 and the violent ethnic cleansing of at least 750,000 Palestinians through the "Nakba" (as was always intended by Zionist founders, including future Prime Ministers, David Ben-Gurion & Moshe Sharett – even if at the expense of Jewish children's lives – and the terrorist leader Menachem Begin) inevitably led to war and ongoing resistance from the occupied Palestinians and (with varying commitment) their Arab allies.  The 1947 UN Resolution 181 establishing Israel is arguably voided by Israel's non-compliance with the condition of providing compensation for any Arab land "expropriated", which was reinforced in 1948 and subsequent UN resolutions by affirming the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their land or be compensated.

Though the origins of Zionism are understandable, in practice (& perhaps inevitably) its implementation in Israel has created a deeply racist & violent apartheid state.  But since 1948, the West has continued to use Israel as a vassal state for protecting Western interests (by resisting Arab dominance in the oil-rich Middle East), which has caused Western leaders to turn a blind eye to the decades of Palestinian oppression by Israel — demonstrated by ongoing theft of land by illegal armed settlers (with the corresponding violence & apartheid fully supported by the Israeli state) and the terrorising of Palestinian families through extrajudicial killings, torture and other physical abuse in the occupied West Bank, along with the active targeting of children (or imprisoning them just for throwing stones, potentially for up to 20 years, after detaining & abusing them by the thousands through a "military justice system"), and through the shooting of thousands of mostly unarmed (or rock-throwing) protestors in the knees (and killing hundreds), including children at Gaza's border fence (e.g. see here), by eager & boastful Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers operating under slack authorisation standards that place more value on bullets than human beings.

Building on its experience oppressing Palestinians, Israel – the most militarised nation on the planet – then sells its expertise in controlling populations to the rest of the world — including dictatorships known for their human rights violations — which reinforces its influence with global powers.

Israel's theft of land from Palestinian people
(following Ottoman & British rule)

Advancing the “naked self-interest of the U.S.” through Israel was explicitly made plain by US President Biden in 1986 (& again in mid 2023) when he said, "Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region".  American interests are also illustrated by the 600,000 US citizens living in Israel (6.5% of its population), including 60,000 in illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and over 23,000 serving in the IDF.

As the late John Pilger reported in 2002, the problem of colonial occupation of Palestine over the last century, and the continuing mistreatment of Arabs there, was and still is a huge problem, or even "the issue" in the Middle East.

Now in late 2023, any doubts must surely be dispelled about the true, self-interested motives of corrupt US elites (including those bought by Zionists) and the callous, psychopathic approach of the US & its subservient Western allies (especially in the UK, where foreign policy is devoid of humanitarian concerns as "bullying & corrupt collusion" is enabled by 25% of MPs being funded by Israel lobby groups, whilst both sides of politics are bullied to follow the US line), after witnessing the hypocrisy of their moral outrage and insincere advocacy for a broken, so-called "international rules-based order" when they become complicit in supporting or trying to hide untold war crimes by Israel (like these & these) as it escalates its war on Palestinians and pursues a clearly outlined plan for ethnic cleansing after being attacked on 7 October 2023 by Hamas — the political/militant group that opposes Zionism, not Jews, and which Israel initially supported in order to divide the Palestinians and avoid a "two-State" solution (that Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu dishonestly undermined and Israel now openly opposes), whilst Israel & the US ignored Hamas' overtures for a 50-year ceasefire.

Though horrific, Hamas' attack was an inevitable eruption resulting from Israel keeping 2 million Gazans in "the largest concentration camp on Earth", which Israel blockaded for 17 years (whilst periodically shooting & bombing civilians, which Israel casually calls, "mowing the lawn", as it absurdly & hypocritically labels those it kills as "human shields") — with the result being that water was largely undrinkable, unemployment was at 45% and half of the children there had no will to live.  But Hamas' attack provided a (convenient) excuse for the apparently corrupt & racist, white supremacist, psychotic, religious Nazi, Netanyahu and his fascist Ministers, who openly & clearly indicated their intentions for another "Nakba" and the death of all Palestinian "animals", as Israel's President, Isaac Herzoc, declared, "There are no innocent civilians in Gaza", and the Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, ordered a "complete siege on Gaza" – with "no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel" – as he "released all the restraints" on Israeli forces to embark on an orgy of war crimes and a new genocidal holocaust.

Despite Israel's clear intentions, the West then dutifully gives it cover with the help of an intensely lobbied & captured mainstream media that deliberately provides heavily biased pro-Israel coverage of events — purposefully keeping readers in the dark as it refuses to report the full truth of what happened on 7 October, including that Israeli casualties were worsened by IDF "friendly fire" at buildings & cars without knowing who was in them, and even by wilfully sacrificing Israeli captives to avoid them being held hostage (applying the “Hannibal Directive” – "ordered from the top" – to likely kill at least 14 Israeli civilians and probably many 10s or hundreds, as Israel eventually admitted and Western mainstream media belatedly reported after more than 9 months of complicit silence).

Most disgracefully, Western media, such as the BBC (which even blocks humanitarian fundraising for people in Gaza), repeatedly & uncritically spread Israel's constant, brazen lies, disinformation and exaggerated or completely untrue allegations of unevidenced atrocities (like fabricated claims of "beheaded babies" – promoted by blatant lies from US President Biden – and implausible / "debunked" mass rape stories based on discredited sources that even the original distributors belatedly regretted promoting) — in order to justify Israel's ferocious, murderous response carried out under the pretence of "self defence" (a legal right that the occupied Palestinians have, but which Israel, as an illegal occupying force, does not).  Whilst "self defence" is used to justify Israel's mass slaughter of Palestinians, no such arguments are entertained for the 7 October Hamas attack, in which its deputy chief says its fighters had been told to only target Israeli soldiers and not harm civilians.

A genocide enabled by Western leaders and media

The insidious, subtle manipulation of public opinion through Western media propaganda (involving systematic double standards and frequent violations of journalistic principles, along with longstanding political interference & peddling of Israeli disinformation) – designed to minimise widespread public opposition – is reinforced by spreading the West's own anti-Muslim racism and false accusations of antisemitism (with backing from political leaders), whilst using deliberately biased language that applies persistently unbalanced descriptions that dehumanise Palestinians murdered & taken hostage by Israel, and selectively reporting events to downplay or ignore Israel's inhumane, sickening barbarity & sadistic atrocities — which have overwhelming support from Israel’s "mainstream", including the gleeful backing of a racist, genocidal Israeli public and army, along with Rabbis who say the Torah demands they kill all Palestinians in Gaza, including infants, children, women and the elderly (and is also reflected by Goebbels-level Israeli propaganda that varies from the absurd to sickening snuff videos (run by the IDF) and material reminiscent of Hitler Youth — Israeli children singing "The Friendship Song 2023", with the words, “We will annihilate everyone” in Gaza).

All this deliberate control of biased mainstream media messaging (which starkly contrasts with its reporting on Ukraine) then whitewashes or ignores Israel's war crimes and erases the context of history, thus helping to provide cover for Western leaders who repeatedly refuse to condemn Israel's extreme response or demand restraint and back a ceasefire, and instead actively support crimes against humanity as warmongering US leaders continue to supply Israel with weapons without proper scrutiny & approval (committing $17 billion in additional military aid, with $6.5 billion worth of weapons over 9 months, including 14,000 highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs, despite opposition from a clear majority of Americans) — as does a fully-supportive Germany (accounting for 30% of major arms sales to Israel), as well as the UK (along with British military logistical support, and the backing of Britain's chief rabbi) and others (including support from Australia's secretive military exports and its intelligence from Pine Gap used to guide Israel's missiles, making Australia fully complicit in enabling the genocide of Palestinians).

This Western backing enables Israel to systematically & flagrantly violate international laws and the rules of war — defying the UN (as well as killing over 150 of its aid workers in 3 months and over 230 UN personnel in a year) as it reinforces its prior 17-year siege designed to make Gaza uninhabitable by blockading the supply of water, food, fuel, aid & medicines (as it said it would, with support from British PM, Keir Starmer) whilst proudly carpet-bombing Gaza with flesh-burning phosphorus bombs and explosives on the scale of nuclear weapons within only a few weeks (6,000 bombs or 1kt of explosives in just the first week and 30,000 bombs in 3 months – 8 times more than the U.S. dropped on Iraq during 6 years of war – with 70,000 tonnes over 6 months, which is more than twice the total dropped on Dresden, Hamburg & London combined in WWII).

Any notion that the widespread civilian casualties could be considered legitimate collateral damage of war is clearly dispelled by Israel's deliberate and constant targeting of hospitals (even children's hospitals) and multiple refugee camps (full of children) spread all over Gaza, as well as many more refugees sheltering in schools (as Israel has done in prior years, repeatedly) and even kindergartens, along with mosques, churches & universities (all of them), plus water supply pipes, sewage systems and desalination plants, whilst killing more than 30k people (over 90% civilians, with about 40% children & 20-30% women) in 100 days (with over 18k children massacred in 8 months), including over 100 journalists (often murdered in their homes, along with their family) — with more journalists killed in just 7 weeks than in all of Vietnam or WWII and over 130 or 10% of local journalists and media workers slaughtered in about 6 months (170 in a year according to Gaza's government, soon after reaching 180), whilst compliant Western journalists – deliberately detached from the massacre of Arabs – dutifully relay Israel's propaganda, with all sympathy devoted to the psychological trauma of Israeli soldiers who have committed atrocities.

After 9 months of this genocidal onslaught, in which Israel dropped the equivalent of 6 Hiroshima bombs on Gaza (79kt) and an average of 10 surviving children a day lost one or both of their legs, The Lancet conservatively estimated that the full death toll, including the indirect effects of Israel's seige & destruction of basic services, could well reach 186,000 (8% of Gaza's population) or even more.

The inevitable and clearly intentional consequence of this murderous terror campaign is to push the entire population into submission and "voluntary migration" or else death through ubiquitous starvation, famine & disease, if not through effectively indiscriminate destruction of civilian targets & entire neighbourhoods — "justified" as always with the lie that civilians are being used by Hamas as "human shields", even though Israel's supposed targets of Hamas militants are hiding in underground tunnels.

Israel's lies are further demonstrated by their targeting of children & the elderly (executed by snipers with deliberate single shots to the head) and the use of an AI-enabled 'mass assassination factory' as an excuse to kill almost anyone — using surveillance and statistics to target as many as 37,000 Palestinian men, with human involvement of maybe 20 seconds for approving each target, and then applying "AI rules" allowing 15-20 civilian casualties during airstrikes on low-ranking militants, and more than 100 civilians for top-ranking Hamas officials — because Israel prefers to use “dumb” bombs (not “smart” precision bombs) that destroy entire homes & families, as they "don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people", and anyway they consider that no-one in Gaza is innocent.  The contempt shown by the IDF for Palestinian lives is reinforced by reports of them "burning down houses just to lift the atmosphere", shooting unarmed Palestinians because they're "bored", deliberately running over them in tanks (& boasting about it), shooting children in cars from tanks (children that Western media passively reports as inexplicably "found dead", in contrast to Israelis, who are "butchered" or "massacred"), and hunting civilians with armed quadcopters — even luring them out of hiding to their deaths by playing recordings of crying babies and women screaming in distress.

Israel killed over 12k Palestinian children in 100 days & 18k in 8 months after 7 October 2023

Moreover, whilst Israel & the West try to justify all these monstrous crimes by pointing to the 130 hostages taken by Hamas (many of whom were soldiers and are thus arguably captured "prisoners of war", and who at least were kept alive and apparently treated well in Gaza, until Israeli bombing killed some of them), they have nothing to say about the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners/hostages (including 200 children, or more in early 2024) that Hamas wanted released (which was their motivation for taking Israeli hostages, as a bargaining chip).

Even before October 2023, 40% of male Palestinians have spent time in an Israeli prison and arrests were ramping up dramatically (see chart from here below).  By April 2024, Israel had 9,500 people imprisoned for actions as innocuous as raising a Palestinian flag or social media posts expressing empathy with victims in Gaza, with 3,660 "administrative detainees" (including over 60 children) arrested without charge or process and imprisoned in secret locations (where access is also blocked for international organisations such as the Red Cross) where they are subjected to horrific, inhumane treatment & torture, including acute & degrading physical & sexual abuse (plus further abuse as hospital patients) — even being sodomized to death (with the support of Israeli Ministers along with rioting & protesting Israelis and advocates on TV).

Then as Israeli jails become overcrowded, the solution advocated by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister (& criminal terrorist settler), is to execute prisoners — bringing Israel another step closer to the Nazis' logical conclusion of gas chambers being the most efficient "final solution".

Western hypocrisy, complicity, authoritarianism and contempt for international law

Throughout this most documented genocide in history, the US bullies the UN (see video from 10') as the West conflates criticism of Israel & Zionism with antisemitism (a stance influenced by extreme & unrepresentative Jewish organisations but rejected by many anti-Zionist Jews who support peace, including several prominent Jews in videos listed at the end of this article) and minimises reporting of Israel's crimes whilst trying to repress pro-Palestinian demonstrations (e.g. in the UK , Australia & France) along with any dissenting voices (whether artists, teachers, doctors, professors, airline & government staff or politicians) — including by firing actors, nurses and even Jewish professors & Jewish, Palestinian-supporting social workers, along with local & national politicians (on both sides of politics).  And through a concerted strategy to enforce silence (so authorities can control the "narrative" in society), the West's claims to stand for free speech & news media are exposed as a sham, as British & Australian journalists & cartoon satirists (& anyone else who speaks out) are blocked, sacked, intimidated, arrested (violently) & mistreated ("justified" by baseless accusations of "disinformation" & "supporting terrorism" through an abuse of anti-terror legislation), whilst France threatens to contravene basic civil rights by imprisoning anyone who criticises Israel (through criminalising opposition to Zionism).

The climate of fear this creates, along with subtle propaganda that encourages denial of the truth, then minimises public opposition (with the mainstream silence itself also having a self-reinforcing effect) whilst duplicitous & cowardly Western leaders – encouraged by prominent right-wing figures – stand by or actively support Israel's war on Palestinians, and fail in their obligations to hold Israel accountable, as they refuse to initiate or support actions through international institutions to prevent genocide (institutions that the US intimidates and Israel treats with contempt, as it does international law).  One can only speculate that their reticence to do so may be partly out of concern for being charged with similar crimes committed by the US in Iraq (which were even more hidden from the Western public, in the days before Twitter) — such as the denial of food, water, electricity, medical care & humanitarian aid to civilians whilst attacking hospitals and using white phosphorous along with indiscriminate shelling of cities (not the ‘precision’ targeting claimed).

Instead of opposing Israel's actions (which the US could easily stop if it wanted), the West compounds its complicity as it bombs the Houthis (who are trying to stop Israel's genocidal war on Gaza) in an already-devastated Yemen (due to previous bombing by the Saudis, with US & UK help), and then on the day after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) orders "the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance" in Gaza, the US & its allies respond to allegations from an habitually lying Israel – based on flimsy, unevidenced & unverified claims (fed to media by the IDF and apparently derived from torture and not even supported by US intelligence agencies) – by immediately halting aid for Palestinians (following “reverse due process” that revealed "no evidence" even after rigorous inquiry) provided by the United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA), which Israel has long sought to destroy (encouraging Israeli extremists to attack it), not just to starve Gazans but also because UNRWA supports the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homelands, which Israel opposes.

Thus the West actively help to create a monumental disaster and directly contribute to the genocide by amplifying Israel's strategy of making Gaza uninhabitable — as if that wasn't already achieved by Israel's total destruction of Gaza and obstruction of aid (just as it said it would do) with criminally spurious excuses (backed up by blatant US lies denying it), reinforced by its shooting of starving people (which it lies about to try and deny its crimes) and repeated attacks on food aid trucks by the IDF & celebrating Israeli activists (which are quickly ignored by the media as they become normalised, just like Israel’s relentless attacks on hospitals — destroying medical equipment, murdering staff & patients and bulldozing them amongst the wreckage of multiple hospitals into horrifying mass graves across Gaza, which Israel's military simply deny).

Then rather than acting to ensure Israel's compliance with international laws, an arrogant, failing and demonstrably untrustworthy US empire gaslights the UN & Western public by claiming the ICJ "has not ordered an immediate cease-fire", even though the ICJ ordered an immediate stop to "killing members of the group" for Palestinians in Gaza — and so with help from the media the US gives a green light (contrary to woefully late measures and insincere concerns expressed for political purposes, along with worthless, fudged, non-"ceasefire" motions and gaslighting that UN resolutions are not legally binding) with further unconditional military support (the illegality of which is scandalously denied through falsified reports) for an out-of-control, fascist Israel to continue the genocide in areas crammed with refugees where it told Gazans to flee to for safety, but bombed anyway (even striking the masses of refugees in tents).

US support for Israel is then further backed up by open threats to the already-compromised International Criminal Court (reinforcing years of secret, criminal threats from Israel and contempt from the US, which the ICC rightly considered “an offence against the administration of justice”), with explicit opposition to any Israeli being investigated – a prospect absurdly deemed "antisemitic" by Netanyahu – with this gross misuse of that term reinforced by the US through media that labels pro-Palestinian peace protestors as antisemitic and by unconstitutional new US laws banning free speech & assembly if someone criticises Israel.

Tellingly, only after Israel murdered several Western aid workers did US President Biden decide to force Israel to make changes (which they acted on within just hours of his phone call, because Israel's military is completely dependent on US support).  Clearly, whilst the US Government cries for Israelis, Palestinian lives (that could have been saved just as easily) mean nothing to them, or to most other Western politicians and media, who had nothing to say about Israel's slaughter of nearly 200 Arabic aid workers and were only finally motivated to express outrage and condemn Israel when one of their own was killed (and even then only in the most lame, diplomatic way and without any real consequences).  The striking imbalance in empathy is reinforced by the US establishment's crazy preoccupation with denouncing chants in support of Palestinian rights and other language that they falsely claim to be antisemitic, in order to distract from or excuse the ongoing horror of an actual genocide the US Government is enabling (and likewise in Australia).

US disrespect for Palestinians is only further compounded by its insincere "support" for a "two state solution" (which seems mainly motivated by wanting to sell arms to the Saudis and use the repressive dictatorship to threaten Iran & China), whilst it pressures UN Security Council members and ultimately vetoes UN recognition of a Palestinian State (which is of course opposed by a finger-pointing, genocidal Israel), based on the absurd condition that the Palestinian Authority must exert control over all of the Palestinian territories and negotiate statehood with Israel – even though the Palestinian Authority has no power in Gaza and Israel has made it clear it will never accept a Palestinian State (even by an overwhelming vote in its parliament).  Then when the UN General Assembly endorsed that Palestine should be accepted, the US Administration's response was that the consequence will be the withdrawal of US funding, leading to massive cuts in global aid such as that delivered by the World Food Program.

But Western duplicity seems to have no limits, as its leaders cynically commemorate the Jewish Holocaust — saying "never again" whilst fully backing, or at least failing to apply international law to prevent the genocide & ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the sham of a "free democracy" that is the Zionist apartheid Israel (which bans critical news media, even in the occupied West Bank, adopts powers to shut down the internet & all social media, and arrests anyone who speaks out — enabled by an extremist society in which 70% of Jewish Israelis think it should be forbidden to express any sympathy for civilians in Gaza on social media).  The nauseating hypocrisy is then taken to gobsmacking levels through insincere statements against Islamophobia alongside tepid reactions to Israel's crimes and its provoking of out-of-control escalation (threatening total nuclear destruction) by bombing the Iranian consulate in Syria (killing multiple people), followed by swift Western condemnation of Iran for retaliating against Israeli military bases (injuring one person), before the US reverted to trading Palestinian lives for the stability of a one-sided conflict contained to Gaza.

Then the West's descent into an Orwellian dystopia accelerates as its politicians acclaim "democracy, decency & freedom" whilst backing continued global wars as the US suppresses political opposition through a "new McCarthyism" in universities by banning social media platforms (TikTok) that facilitate younger people's opposition to genocide and sending in police to attack student peace protestors with rubber bullets, tasers & teargas (& even target them with snipers) and aggressively arrest university professors, whilst doing nothing to protect those in peace camps from violent attacks by nationalist & Zionist mobs.  Then Congress goes full-on crazy fascist by proposing laws that would cancel the visas of foreign students in the US if they are arrested for "unlawful protest" (even if they're not charged with an actual crime), and even enable student peace camp protesters to be sent to Gaza for a minimum of 6 months, then advocating that Israel use nuclear weapons on Gaza!

Similarly, student protests spreading across Europe are met with violence by police, with particular severity (& concern to Amnesty International) in the Netherlands.  In the UK, peace protestors were arrested for carrying a banner with a peace dove on a blue sky background that was absurdly deemed to indicate they were "supporting a proscribed organisation” (Hamas).

And sadly Germany seems to have learned little from its past, as once again it behaves like a fascist state, when its police brutally assault peace protestors after storming & shutting down a Palestine congress and arresting participants (including Jews) speaking out against the historic & continuing oppression of Palestinians and in support of universal human rights & peace, whilst, astonishingly (& contrary to the supposed free movement of EU citizens), the German Government bans the former Greek Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis, from entering or conducting any political activity in Germany, and also detains & blocks the entry to Germany of a prominent British-Palestinian surgeon (who was going to speak to the conference about his work in Gaza hospitals) as well as blocking him from entering France and the Netherlands (under a ban applied across the 29-country Schengen group) — perhaps because he has spoken about Israel using EU-funded sniper drones to execute Gazans inside hospitals.

It all leaves me (& others) thinking that maybe "we're the baddies" (& that I should reject my inherited Jewishness, which makes no genetic sense anyway — a reality that Israeli colonialists therefore prohibit being revealed).

More precise quotes by Einstein on Zionism are here.

The true motives are greed & power, not fighting terrorism 

As this war on Arabs increases their support for responding with armed struggle (since Palestinians will never give up their quest for dignity & justice) – which means the war may ultimately lead to the collapse of a Zionist Israel – I wonder when we will ever learn that violence begets violence and never-ending retaliation and war is not the answer (as was obvious from the start).  But it seems Western leaders really are out of their minds (although the cycle of hate & violence may be a deliberate US strategy), as they spurn restraint when it suits them – including opportunities at the UN to diplomatically address Israel's provocation of Iran – and instead demonstrate blatant inconsistency in their judgement of each side's actions & reactions as they pave the path for war to escalate across the Middle East, ultimately leading to the failure of Israel's claimed objectives and the potential end of all Western influence in the region.

Yet if we put as much effort into peace as war, the political-geographic solutions to the underlying problems – as I outline here – are really not that hard (although they must go well beyond Israel's previous insulting "peace proposals" of discontinuous land overruled by continued Israeli apartheid control and IDF violence, and we must also overcome the entrenched fear that Israeli society has been built on – magnified by myths – because fear is what leads to the most destructive anger, hate & suffering).

However, whilst the extremist Israeli public's active support for the abuse & massacre of Palestinians might be driven by fear & hate, the motives of its government – and certainly also what's behind US support for Israel's actions (along with backing from the arms industry and Zionist funding of US politicians) – are surely greed & power, combined with an utter disregard for any Palestinian lives that get in the way of that.  In fact these motives were blatantly advertised by Netanyahu in his September 2023 address to the UN, in which he announced plans (agreed just two days prior with US President Biden) for a new trade alliance with Israel's undemocratic Arab neighbours, enabling them to "build a new corridor" (the trade corridor he marked on a map in which Palestine was erased) through Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel & the Mediterranean Sea to Europe (via a major industrial port in Gaza) — emphasising that Palestinians would not have a veto over these supposed "peace plans" (whilst declaring it critical that "Iran must face a credible nuclear threat").  When the US seeks to hand Palestine over to Saudi rulers, you know they're not concerned about democracy and human rights!

The plan to redevelop Gaza that was released later (on 3 May 2024), which is clearly part of this bigger geoeconomic strategy, labelled Gaza an "Iranian outpost" that "sabotages emerging supply chains", and then as Israel yet again ordered the evacuation of Gazan refugees who had already been displaced to tents in Rafah (whilst intensifying their starvation, bombing them and sending its tanks in), Netanyahu had the audacity to include in this plan vague statements about future Palestinian self-governance (just a week before Israel childishly shred the UN charter in protest at the General Assembly endorsing Palestine's bid to become a full member) — which, if they can be believed at all, seem likely to amount to little more than local council status, as Israel intends to maintain its system of apartheid and "security" that is brutally enforced by the IDF (just like in the West Bank).

The interests of the US and complicit, undemocratic Arab rulers are clearly spelled out, with reference to "newly discovered gas fields just north of Gaza" (see here) and the potential for "defensive pacts with the US" (i.e. profits for the US arms industry as it supports continued rule by force in the region) and "unfettered access to Gaza's Mediterranean ports through railways and pipelines", plus future opportunities for the "intervention in Gaza to be repeated in Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon".

This shouldn't be surprising.  Every nation on the top ten proven oil reserves list is either a target of US warmongering, has already been ruined by US warmongering, or is an ally of the US.

And the aim of occupying Gaza by Israeli settlers and pushing Palestinians out of their lands is openly advocated by Israel's Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, as well as by many other Israeli ministers and MPs.

Racism and relentless fearmongering, military antagonism & waste

With so much arrogance & contempt shown for Palestinian people (& Arab & Muslim lives generally) – who western leaders & media don't seem to see as even human – it's also hard not to believe that aside from self-interest, the actions or inactions of the West are at least partly influenced by racism (as well as by millions of US religious zealots) — a conclusion transparently reinforced by far greater media concerns for Ukrainians, because they are, "civilised, middle-class Europeans like us, with blue eyes and blond hair, who watch Netflix and drive cars like ours".

So what is the source of this racism, and is it a conscious or subconscious bias?  Although I'm not persuaded by the "Critical Race Theory" that "race (is) a creation of society, not a biological reality" and that subconscious racism is systemically embedded in white societies' institutions (because ultimately I think the behaviour of society's institutions depends on the individual people within them), I do think there is a natural biological and evolutionary basis for subconscious racism, which is our inherent tribalism and fear of those who look different and we don't recognise (&/or those who speak an unfamiliar language).  This means if we don't become familiar with faces of different "races" when we're young (when we can even learn to distinguish between individual monkey faces), then it becomes much harder to do so as adults, because we specialise in distinguishing between faces amongst those around us, whilst all faces of a different race tend to look rather similar & unfamiliar, and are therefore an instinctive source of fear (albeit perhaps exhibited in a mild way by most people as a relative reluctance to engage with those who seem different from ourselves).  To combat this, we must try to become aware of such subconscious feelings and override them with conscious will — accepting that all people are essentially the same, with similar hopes & fears (albeit manifested in different ways according to their history), and equally deserving of the same basic rights, care and treatment.

Isn't it ironic that despite having a monument at Sydney Olympic Park paying tribute to the human rights and multiculturalism promoted by King Cyrus the Great of Persia (now Iran), we've yet to truly catch up with the world's first Charter of Human Rights he established more than 2,500 years ago? (which influenced Thomas Jefferson & the "self-evident truth that all men (& women) are created equal" in the USA's declaration of independence).

The disregard or contempt the West shows for non-white people also exposes the superficial virtue-signalling of its woke obsessions — not least with gender wars, which seem to be a deliberate distraction from the atrocities the media is determined to ignore that are routinely committed in actual wars the West keeps backing.

Far from demonstrating their proclaimed commitment to "equality" for all people, our lunatic leaders and warmongering media exploit, dangerously politicise and fan the flames of people's fears & racism, as they engage in the dangerous bravado of provocative (& very expensive) sabre rattling, whilst the "very, very expensive basket case that is @DefenceAust procurement" wastes untold billions of dollars on repeated failures in the selection & delivery of pointless high-tech "defence" systems (through the influence of a corrupt arms industry to which the Australian Government is joined at the hip), such as "lemons" like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that are redundant before they've even been built, as they may have been suited to the wars of last century but are practically irrelevant & useless against terrorists or other modern threats to national security (at least in Australia, where the supposed threat of invasion is ludicrous).

Even worse is the ramped up antagonism towards China (which gets slurred along with Russia & Iran as being part of an updated "axis of evil"), led by the "extreme fools" in NATO whose attempts to exert US/Anglo dominance in Asia through the new "AUKUS" alliance are "an accident on its way to happen”, with Australia making itself a military outpost as the "51st State" of an aggressive US and being bullied again into one of its "worst defence and foreign policy decisions" ever by wasting a staggering $368 billion on absurdly-expensive yet still obsolete nuclear submarines (that will support US nuclear missile capabilities) — a "monumental folly" pushed by a right-wing agenda of US hegemony focussed on attacking China and thwarting the French-Indian strategy for a multilateral balance with China in the region, and then backed by the Opposition leader (& subsequent PM), Anthony Albanese, for purely political reasons (despite them being an even more crazy and useless "con-job" than the previous plan to spend $90 billion on dated & "obsolete" French submarines).

Combined with Australia accommodating a build-up of US military & spies (alongside other US bases in the region), giving the US military unimpeded access to and use of multiple sites across Australia and enabling the global proliferation of US nuclear weapons capabilities, whilst reinforcing the antagonism towards Asian neighbours by acquiring threatening long-range missiles, and being pressured by the US to spend ever more on defence, Australia is somehow managing to fuel a new arms race that weakens regional stability and increases the risk of being targeted through retaliation or pre-emptive action by a nervous foreign power, whilst simultaneously massively increasing military spending yet squeezing the budget that's left for potential truly defensive initiatives.  And then our politicians try to justify the "mind boggling" waste with absurd arguments about job creation.

The US has trashed the "rules-based order"

The warmongering behaviour of the US and its Western allies (including Australia, where the government is also heavily influenced by "extremely conservative lobbying for Israel, and the approach to human rights is determined by "interests" rather than principles) – and especially the most blatant hypocrisy & dishonesty shown by the support for Israel's barbaric slaughter of Palestinians and its contempt for the United Nations – has "ripped the mask off" the West's true nature and revealed the lie of its claim to support a "rules-based international order" — rules that the US is less compliant with than any other country, and which it resists when it comes to Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian land (as determined by the ICJ) and even openly rejects with more threats against the ICC (from "world leaders" and especially from Republicans, in laws put to Congress) for seeking the arrest of Israeli (& Hamas) leaders for their war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine, coupled with preposterous attempts to challenge ICC jurisdiction (using the UK lapdog to do it's bidding), so as to buy Israel more time to continue its genocide and constant atrocities.  However, Netanyahu & Biden were at least technically right when they attempted an irrelevant distraction by saying there is no comparison or equivalence between Israel's & Hamas' crimes (echoed by subservient German, British, Canadian and Australian politicians, along with right-wing media) — because Israel's monstrous crimes have been far worse!  With the full backing of the West, Israel has literally incinerated global rules and enacted a new holocaust.

Some Western leaders even admit they think the ICC was only "built for Africa and for thugs like Putin", not for the West & its allies, and say, "the ICJ can go to hell" as the complicit US & submissive UK (though not Australia) ignore the ICJ while they maintain support for Israel as it continues its attacks on Rafah (slaughtering hundreds as it bombs refugees in tents there, as well as those sheltering in schools & mosques across Gaza) after the ICJ dismissed Israel's lies and ordered it to stop, immediately.  The US even actively enables more Israeli war crimes — openly declaring that "Israel has the right to target civilians* and then using its nonsensical "aid-delivery" pier (ordered by President Biden against expert advice) to support a "Trojan horse" massacre as part of a hostage-rescue operation (assisted as usual by Western media, which refuses to report the use of the pier and an aid truck to hide IDF soldiers), before abandoning the pier as famine spreads across Gaza.  Then they continue with sham "peace negotiations" used by the US & Israel as a sideshow distraction for political & military tactical advantage, as Israel continues with its blatant war crimes (including attacking aid trucks and relentlessly slaughtering children & other civilians by constantly bombing them or deliberately shooting them in the head), whilst it ramps up its violent ethnic cleansing in the West Bank (with property theft supported by Israel's "justice" system) and in North Gaza, where Israel completely blocks food supplies to 400k trapped people and orders an indefinite, mass evacuation of the area, including of hospitals (which it bombs with the cover of the complicit Western media's usual lack of concern compared to that shown for a few Israeli soldier casualties), as it moves towards annexation and blatant ethnic cleansing (supported by zealous, extremist Israeli settlers) with an extermination campaign by intensifying its attacks and starvation siege (and totally banning the aid agency, UNRWA, with the support of right-wing Western politicians) until the entire population of North Gaza is at risk of dying.

As if that wasn't enough, and unencumbered by any international restraints, Israel also expands its cross-border attacks with terrorist activity in neighbouring countries using illegal, booby-trapped communications devices (enabled by silent hypocrisy from US leaders & celebratory headlines in US & Australian news media) and relentless escalation with massive bombing (of multiple countries) – destroying regions of city blocks in Beirut and killing hundreds of civilians alongside political assassinations just days after supposedly agreeing to a ceasefire (& enabled as always by Western media) – with over 1,200 killed in just 2 weeks as Israel threatens the same destruction as inflicted on Gaza and conducts another invasion of Lebanon (displacing over a million people) that again involves deliberate attacks on healthcare facilities (with the usual lies about terrorists using them, fully backed by the German foreign Minister, exposing her Green party principles and “feminist foreign policy” as a sham) and news media offices and UN peacekeepers (followed up by further threats to the UN directly from Netanyahu), which inevitably leads to more extremism and retaliation by Iran on military targets (with the usual hypocritical & one-sided Western reactions along with authoritarian suppression of protests from Western governments like Australia), followed by more "retaliation" by Israel with "precise strikes" against Iran, as NATO backs Israel and declares that any nation aligning itself with Iran would be regarded as an adversary...

US enablement of Israeli fascism may be the most starkly obvious example — as Republicans especially in the US Congress applaud the lies and racist invective of the shameless war-criminal Netanyahu for leading Israel's ongoing terrorism, genocidal-violence, societal-destruction and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (backed up by active support or silent complicity from the entire US-Western political-media establishment) — but it's not some kind of weird aberration from an otherwise peaceful & benevolent US Empire.  Nor are America's never-ending wars a series of unfortunate failures, despite the most noble intentions.  US leaders may be crazy and/or senile, but the Establishment that puts them there are not so stupid that they can't see that their "forever wars" never have any hope of achieving any kind of conventional military objective.  No, non-stop war IS the objective; it's global terrorism, with the not-so-subtle accompanying message, "Do what America says!" (plus it delivers a constant flow of $ from taxpayers to the corrupt military-industrial-political elite).  That's what President Biden plainly reveals when he says he's, "running the world".  The brutal reality is that we in the West are the terrorists!

And the increasingly clear pattern and intensity of global bullying, warmongering & antagonism reflects an empire whose global hegemony is under threat – especially from China's growing economic power – which is revealing with increasing transparency US leaders' true motives and the brutal lengths they will go to as they vainly try to retain domination at all cost and resist the USA's inevitable relative decline.  In the war that it provoked with Russia in Ukraine, NATO engages in reckless nuclear escalation as Congressmen openly admit their aim of profiting from Ukrainian mineral wealth (see here), as the US plans for full-scale war over Taiwan and simultaneous nuclear war with Russia, China & North Korea, whilst also pushing Canada and the EU into joining its self-destructive, protectionist trade war with China (based on casually fabricated claims of "overproduction"), whilst EU leaders enthusiastically join the US in its preparations for war.

Yet as the US acts contrary to the interests of its own citizens and seems hell-bent on a path to WWIII, its government is shrouded in secrecy (whilst it hypocritically advocates for a free press and restricts Americans’ access to Russian media) and its rigged & broken democracy is completely failing — a global joke in 2024, as the Presidential candidates in the 2-party duopoly compete to be most hawkish in their enthusiasm for a war with Iran.  But in this dystopian world, the American people do get to choose a special kind of feminist genocide, delivered with flowers and “joy” by a "commanding girlboss with brown skin and she/her pronouns".

The US is really just a plutocracy corrupted by money and lobbyists, especially the military-industrial complex and Zionist groups, which Netanyahu bragged about in the 1980s and former President Jimmy Carter said in 2007,

"Not a single member of Congress could possibly speak out and call for Israel to withdraw to their legal boundaries, or to publicise the plight of Palestinians, or even to call for peace talks.
If any did speak out, they would probably not be back in Congress the next term."

The truth of this was demonstrated by the elimination of pro-Palestinian Congress candidates in 2024 primaries — a consequence of election campaign spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which was among the top 20 spenders in the 2022 elections (the only one in the top 20 focussed on the interest of a foreign entity) as it contributed to the campaigns of 365 candidates and 342 Congress members elected since 2021.  AIPAC then boasted about the success of its blatant election interference in the elections of 5 November 2024.

What should we do?

US global leadership and economic dominance is over.  In 2024, the end of the "petrodollar" and the establishment of a BRICS payment system (a threat to the US$ that the US labels a "threat to democracy") – supported by a queue of nations looking at joining BRICS (41 countries applied or interested in joining in October 2024, with economies surging ahead of several European ones & the G7 overall), who no longer want to be bullied or to buy spiralling US debt – are both symptoms of, and contributing forces to the decline of US power.  Although the US still notionally leads an alliance of Western nations, it no longer has any global respect from the majority of the world's population or states, and clearly it's unconscionable for any nation that claims to stand for human decency and universal rights to remain in military alliance with such a depraved, morally bankrupt empire.

On the question of Palestine, the US is becoming increasingly isolated, as more countries reject the US position and recognise Palestine as a State and reject US obstruction of international law by overwhelmingly supporting a UN vote on implementing ICJ orders for Israel to end its unlawful occupation of Palestinian Territories and making reparation for damage caused to all.  All moral nations, and those threatened by US imperialism, must unite against the bullying US and sanction the fascist Israel to force the establishment of a contiguous state of Palestine from Gaza to the West Bank (as I outline here).

In Ukraine, a peace should be negotiated that accommodates the legitimate concerns of Russia (especially a balanced security framework) and the desires of the people in the affected areas (including the Russian-speaking population) through creative "out of the box" solutions.  Then the warmongering NATO (& AUKUS) should be dismantled — to be replaced by regional security plans & agreements that can be genuinely supported and backed up by the UN (probably on the basis of a new regional UN structure).

And strident anti-China rhetoric & global propaganda (supported by massive US government funding) needs to be replaced with a more effective diplomatic approach that reflects our strong, mutually-beneficial economic interdependencies, with any challenges that China's growing power represents being best addressed by Australia through smarter economic strategies, such as reducing the reliance on old resource-export industries and working in partnership with other countries (e.g. in the British Commonwealth).

However, given our current leaders are doing the exact opposite of these things, we need to tackle the fundamental problems in our democracies that are producing such failing governance — through the constitutional reforms that I outline here for Australia (& other nations).