House Of Cards

The International Court of Justice found Friday that the government of South Africa has a legitimate complaint against the government of Israel for committing the crime of genocide in Gaza. To which, my reaction is Duh! Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and various other of its government officials and apologists are proof enough of their guilt by the way they deny culpability, basically declaring Israel to be above reproach, and the very accusation of genocide is an insult to the memory of the Holocaust.

The Holocaust excuse has been trotted out for decades, and it never gets old, for Israel at least. For the rest of humanity I suspect it has become a bit hackneyed. Worse, really. It is an often hysterical omnibus excuse and deflection for whatever perfidy Israel foists on the Palestinians.

Like the accusation of "antisemitism," playing the Holocaust card has finally run its course. After the fully intentional genocide in Gaza, Israel has used up its moral capital in the world. To be sure, there was much moral capital to use up, 6,000,000 Jews murdered in the Nazi Holocaust. Not 6,000,000 Israelis, it should be noted, but 6,000,000 people identified as Jews, or Juden in German, a people associated by religion and ethnicity. After World War II Israel was created, or granted, as compensation for the horrors that Jews experienced at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. Or, as some have noted, to get rid of them.

Then there was the benefactor – the United States of America, not a particularly Jew-loving country. Israel was seen as a handy ally in both the Cold War and as a surrogate presence in the Mideast. To serve these dual purposes, much money was required – and given, in the hundreds of billions, in both economic and military assistance.

Just as playing the Holocaust card has run its course, so also have the Cold War and hegemony in the Mideast cards. The Cold War is over, and our track record of meddling in the area between North Africa and Southwest Asia is a tale of folly and mischief. We have no credibility in the region, and have caused great harm wherever we have stuck our moneyed noses. Whether it was in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and of course in the Southern Levant that includes Palestine and Israel, we have behaved with bad intentions, and with horrendous results.

We also allied with the Apartheid regime in South Africa, and in combination with Iran in the Shah era and Israel, we had a supposed "iron triangle" of client states doing our bidding and keeping the region free of "communism" and profits flowing. It is no small irony that it is the post-Apartheid South Africa that has risen to file an Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel).

It is all over but the shouting, and of course we are hearing much shouting. Realities have changed on Planet Earth. There is no more Cold War, we have run out of shenanigans in the Mideast, and there are what economists call secular trends - the unsustainability of our infinite-growth economic system and the impending and ongoing disasters caused by climate change.

Joe Biden, candidate for reelection, is trying to finesse the Gaza genocide, supporting what Israel does while pretending to apply pressure on Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The key element in his attempted finesse is that we are being "told" that he is applying pressure. Biden has never suggested a cease-fire, and when questioned about the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza both he, his secretary of state and his national security spokesman have responded that Israel has the right to self defense. The most concern he showed was to say that he was "worried" by the number of civilians killed in the bombing attacks. 

Biden, a 100% politician, is worse than dishonest and naive. He says what he thinks will work - true or false. Lying about Israel, Gaza and the Palestinians will fool the American people just like it always has. Except things are different now. He is unpopular for a number of reasons, and only diehard Democratic voters believe anything he says. Young people, many of whom are from Arab and Muslim backgrounds, are deserting him and the Democrats. I am neither young nor Arab or Muslim, but I won't vote for Genocide Joe this fall. I voted for him in 2020, largely because of Trump, but also because I never vote for Republicans, who stand for the wealthy, corporations and for trodding on the downtrodden. 

Beyond that it doesn't matter much. In a condition of pending climate disaster and economic collapse, who might be the corrupt president of the United States is of minor consequence. I suppose the best we can settle for is the person who is the least corrupt. Whomever that person may be, the days of unlimited and unquestioning political, economic and military support for the genocide state of Israel will be a thing of the past. We will be lucky to still have a country.

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Here's a song. Here's another. David Byrne.

R.I.P. Melanie. I used to have her double album. She sang at Woodstock, wrote this song about being there.

We are spending what little is left of our moral capital. 

Here's an update about the lawsuit in Federal Court in Oakland, California, accusing Genocide Joe, his secretary of state and his secretary of defense of complicity in genocide and that they be enjoined from further military aid to Israel. 

Update, January 31: The judge in the genocide lawsuit in Federal court in Oakland, California against the Biden administration dismissed the case on the grounds that the courts lack authority over certain political decisions made by Congress and the executive branch. 

The trial set a precedent, being the first time Palestinians had the opportunity to present their case in a court anywhere. The International Court of Justice case is different, Brought by a country, South Africa, against Israel. This case was brought by Palestinians, represented by lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights. 

Though this result is a setback, it brought attention to the plight of the Palestinians, and it put Genocide Joe and his cronies on notice that his complicity in the genocide in Gaza will have consequences.

Meanwhile, here's an interesting discussion of the meaning of the word genocide. We will be dealing with this current genocide for a long time.

An interview with non-genocidal presidential candidate Cornel West can be seen here.

Nature Abhors a Vacuum

Trump jokes are no longer funny. His act has gone on too long. Acts about his act have gone on too long as well. It used to be that satirizing, ridiculing, parodying and mocking him were ways of taking him down to size, showing defiance and rendering him unworthy. At some point it has to be fait accompli. He is now a national joke, so why the need to keep making jokes about the national joke?

It certainly can be argued that he is still a force to be contended with, so we need to keep making fun of him. He is running for president again, and "the polls" show he is the leading "Republican" candidate. His leadingness in public opinion polls has been news for a couple of years now, which says more about the "news" industry than about what is important in people's lives. For pundits and pundit wanna-bes on TV especially, talking about endless minutiae regarding Donald Trump gives them a reason to exist, an easy way to feign knowledge and wisdom without knowing much of anything. And, they can rise up the ladder of punditocracy, maybe even becoming "the most trusted man in America" (always a man) like Walter Cronkite once was.

I was all-in on Trump humor. It helped keep my spirits up during this surreal episode in this country's history. Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Jon Stewart, John Oliver and Trevor Noah provided hilarious scorn and ridicule, and often showed great insight into the nature of Trump’s criminal operation. Others, like various players on Saturday Night Live, used parody and farce to lampoon the real farce that Trump has foisted on the American public for too many years.

I feel an energy shift. Trump is now a pathetic character. He is losing in court repeatedly, his behavior is becoming even more deranged and erratic, and former friends, allies and co-defendants are turning against him on a daily basis. He is like a bull in the final stage of a bullfight – worn down, enraged, body pierced all over with picador lances, stumbling, dazed and confused, the matador closing in for the kill.

The kill, in Trump’s case, is metaphoric. The matador could be any number of prosecutors, judges, witnesses, or even family members, should they turn on him after he turns on them. More likely it will be an agglomeration of matadors delivering the final thrust into the body of the exhausted beast. The end is near for Trump. No man has the strength to withstand the onslaught of prosecution, conviction and disgrace that is coming his way, certainly not someone 77 years old and in steep mental decline.

Trump's supporters likely also see him as a wounded and worn-down battler, except in heroic terms, the valiant hero fighting against the godless oppressors. What sane, intelligent people see as a grifter getting his due to the Trump faithful is the savior of mankind, a Jesus figure being crucified. Pundits and others, of course, see the MAGA crowd as a great threat to “democracy,” and are spreading fear about what his followers would do, should he be sent to prison or removed from eligibility for "reelection."(Fact-check: in order to be reelected you have to hold office. Otherwise you are just a candidate.)

When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, yell and shout. Television again, thrives on hysteria, hype, excitement. The sky is falling, let’s keep watching TV! Taking a calmer approach, I recognize the danger, but as we have seen, the actual threat of physical harm comes from a small portion of the "right wing." Most MAGA adherents are the kind of people who are fair game for mob-inciters, but who are not likely to act beyond the complaint stage. The people who actually showed up in Washington in 2021 to overthrow the election were a very small percentage of Trump's supporters. 

The same goes for the plotters who planned to kidnap and kill the governor of Michigan. Very few in number. Vigilantes are a danger, but modern law enforcement is up to the task of investigating them and bringing them to justice.

What is of real concern, though, is the condition that makes a candidate for office like Trump possible in the first place. He is the worst kind of demagogue – hateful, inciter of violence, scapegoater, a total criminal, loyal to no one but himself, and an advocate of the most divisive, mean and harmful government actions imaginable. Somehow he was able to convince enough people to vote for him in 2016 that he "won" the presidency.

What makes the situation even more pathetic is that the supposed alternative is Genocide Joe, the cheerleader for the carnage in Gaza. This makes him a man without honor, ethics and morality. If he can't be trusted to act with honor, ethics and morality elsewhere, he can’t be trusted here. Joe Biden, the 100% politician, can be trusted to do what is politically advantageous – to him. Hmm. Sounds a bit like Trump.

In spite of all this, I am optimistic. In Physics, potential is the thing that is not. The evil of today implies its opposite. Yang implies Yin. There was a buildup of negative energy over many decades. It came to fruition with the ascendance (or descendance, like on an escalator) of Donald Trump. He only got so far, and now his criminal operation is in shambles. It is fitting that we would have both him and Genocide Joe at the same time as our supposed leaders. Nature abhors a vacuum.

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R.I.P. Tom Smothers. Here's an example of his humor. He was in the Give Peace a Chance video.

Here's a song for Trump. Here's another. One way or another, Trump will be leaving his brokedown palace(s), maybe for the jailhouse, maybe for the poor house. Maybe here from time-to-time.