On COI #521, Kyle Anzalone discusses the war in Ukraine and Israel’s assault on Gaza.
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Another Pointless Assassination in Baghdad
It’s January in an election year, so it must be time for the U.S. to assassinate someone in Baghdad:
A U.S. Special Operations drone strike in Baghdad on Thursday killed a senior figure in an Iran-linked militant group that is part of Iraq’s security apparatus, drawing sharp criticism from the Iraqi government, as well as allied groups.
It is absurd that the U.S. is still engaged in hostilities in Iraq almost 33 years after the end of Desert Storm. There are few better examples of the stupidity and futility of our government’s Middle Eastern policies than the tit-for-tat strikes between U.S. forces and Iraqi militias that answer to a government that our military is supposedly there to support. The U.S. is routinely committing acts of war against the security forces of a government that is considered a partner of the United States, and it does so over the vehement objections of the government that is compelled to host our troops. As if this weren’t already bad enough, this also makes conflict with Iran more likely.
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Murray Polner asked: Are You Ready To Fight Putin’s Russia?
The late, great Murray Polner penned this op-ed for Antiwar.com on February 9, 2015. That’s roughly one year after the US-backed coup in Kiev, about two years before President Donald Trump began providing “lethal” aid to the Ukrainian regime, and seven years before Russia’s invasion.
As if seeing clearly into the future, Polner blasts the war party’s hubris for dragging us into yet another costly, illegal, potentially catastrophic conflict with not just another country, but with nuclear-armed Russia.
He criticizes the American media which refuses their obligation to expose the foreign extremists Washington chooses to align with, in this case neo-Nazis like the Azov Battalion. He also highlights the increasingly erratic nature of the Blob in its insatiable campaign for world dominance, fueled by imperial hubris.
They’re taking on Vladimir Putin’s Russia “as if Iraq, Syria, ISIS, Iran, Cuba, Yemen, [and] Obama’s anti-China [Asia Pivot]“ wasn’t enough.
“Who came down from the mountain and said the U.S. must police the globe from the South China Sea to the jungles of Peru”? ~ Eric S. Margolis
For my sins, I’ve just finished reading the latest report by three of Washington’s centrist think tanks, “Preserving Ukraine’s Independence, Resisting Russian Aggression.” From their peaceful, safe and posh offices they urge President Obama to get tough with Moscow and supply “defensive” weapons to Ukraine, while sanctimoniously concluding, as LBJ and Bush Junior’s echo chambers did in 1965 and 2003, that “assisting Ukraine to …. defend itself is not inconsistent with the search for a peaceful political solution.”
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Netanyahu ‘Working on It’ All Right: Completing His Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza
Netanyahu “working on it” all right: Completing his genocidal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza
If a visitor from another planet came to earth and heard Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu say this about the Palestinians in Gaza, he might surmise Netanyahu was a pretty decent fellow:
“Our problem is finding countries willing to absorb Gazans…and we’re working on it.”
Why Is Spirit of America Always Surrounded by Fog of War?
For the past 20 years, Spirit of America, a US non-governmental and nonprofit organization that works alongside American troops and diplomats, showing the world what they want the world to see about America. It claims to empower Ukraine’s youth to rebuild their communities, to provide life-saving supplies to counter-terror unit in Syria and so on. But the following 4 things about Spirit of America you should not neglect.
Most projects are in conflict zones, in the shadow of war
According to Spirit of America’s website, more than 80% of its projects are located in areas of war or conflict. Meanwhile, over 82% of finished projects are in areas affected by war, local conflicts or terrorism, such as Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Ukraine, Jordan and so on. That means most of Spirit of America’s projects are in the shadow of war.
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Learning from Old Globes
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
Back in 2015, I broke out my old globe and wrote the article below. My globe is roughly 100 years old, when Israel didn’t exist. The relatively tiny area of Palestine (look for Jerusalem) is labeled “Brit Mand,” as in British Mandate after World War I, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the Treaty of Versailles. The British had control over Palestine and made conflicting promises to Zionists (the Balfour Declaration of 1917) and to the Palestinians (the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, which advanced the idea of Arab self-determination).
Israel, of course, was created in the aftermath of World War II and the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews. For Zionists, it was the fulfillment of a dream, even of prophecy. For the Palestinians whose homes and lands were taken from them, it was the Nakba or catastrophe. Another Nakba is currently in progress as Israel destroys the Gaza Strip with the apparent goal of displacing most if not all of the 2.3 million Palestinians who live there.