Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): When Israeli president Isaac Herzog described the assault on Gaza as a war “to save Western civilization, to save the values of Western civilization,” he wasn’t really lying. He was telling the truth — just maybe not quite in the way that he meant it.
It is wonderfully ironic that when these right wing extremists, like Shapiro or Murray, go on talk shows to sing the praises of western values and warn of the apparent war on them, they are never asked to define what they actually are - because then the whole argument would unravel...
I cannot argue against this. I'm just exhausted these days, there is kind of a constant tension in the air, in social interactions, in trying to absorb and escape the constant barrage of media. Just dealing with more or less everyday life problems is exhausting. I'm sure I'm technically depressed, but if you're not depressed you aren't paying attention. Thanks to Caitlin for a small oasis of sanity in an increasingly fractured world.
Nothing justifies Israel’s actions in Gaza — not the Holocaust, not the Diaspora, not God telling them they are the “chosen people”. They need to reread the Old Testament. Non-Zionist Jews in NYC blocked a bridge in protest but that was barely covered in the news.
Every day, I look closely at what American culture offers me, throws at me in distraction -- usually when I'm trying to do something productive -- and mostly what I want to scream (and often I do) is "exploitation". That's what we do. We exploit: the planet, the biosphere, and anyone the culture has set up to be most susceptible to that exploitation. And it's all perpetrated with a consumerist smile that tries to make us feel so so democratic that all these choices are flung before our consciousnesses, when in reality, it's all an authoritarian push by big money to keep the destructive front of the tsunami of consumption moving forward inexorably. Once you see it, it's pure madness incarnate.
All of our congressional reps in my State pat themselves on the back over how many military contracts they "secure" for our state and how many "good paying jobs" they are creating, never for a moment considering the carnage that is left in the wake of U.S. weaponry, or that we blindly value jobs regardless of the part we play in murder across the globe.
That's the thing that really pisses me off about Capitalism. It doesn't care where it makes its money.
The West, or at least Western Elites, has unleashed its Inner Nazi. We support neo-Nazis over in Ukraine, and we give practically unqualified support to the the Right Wing Extremist-Supremacists in Israel. The West has a Fascist monkey on its back that it never shook off, despite a Fairy Tale of defeating Fascism in World War 2.
Literally 2000 years in Europe. It started with barbarian Rome's claims to be "Bringing civilisation", when all it was really doing was mass slaughter and extracting loot to pay for further slaughters.
Yes, it is the settlement of what is now called America, Canada, New Zealand, & Australia. The violence against indigenous, the slaughter, the reservations, the smashing of customs, so it’s easy to see why these countries support Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians.😢there is no conscience!
Alastair Crooke, They Can Wait at Leisure, Whilst Netanyahu Labours – and Errs (paraphrasing Sun Tzu's Art Of War)
This man in the wheelchair and with the rickety earpiece – Sheikh Ahmad Yasin – was the founder of Hamas.
And what he said to me that morning has come to upend the Islamic world today.
What he said was: “Hamas is not an Islamic movement. It is a liberation movement, and anyone, be they Christian, or Buddhist – or even I – could join it. We all were welcome”.
Why was this simple formula somehow so significant and connected to today’s events?
Well, the ethos of Gaza, at that time (2000-2002), was predominantly that of ideological Islamism. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was deeply embedded. It was not then a resistance movement per se – it was capable of violence, but its prime focus was social work and uncorrupted governance. It wanted to show how well it could govern.
Yasin’s comment was revolutionary because liberation trumped dogma and the various ‘schools’ of political Islam. This ultimately was to become ‘Gaza Hamas’ – at odds with its conventional leadership resident in Doha. Sinwar and Dief are ‘Yasin’s children’.
‘Long story short’, a little while later, Yasin, on one of his Friday prayers’ wheel-chair trundles across the road to his adjacent mosque, was blown to pieces by an Israeli missile as he exited...
..PM Blair and President Bush put together a secret (unacknowledged to the EU) plan in response: Hamas leaders – plus the movements’ social support NGOs – were to be eliminated. And the Palestinian Authority would crack down on all and every Hamas activity – in close collaboration with Israel.
The West Bank, in this plan, would be the recipient of large financial aid to construct a prosperous western-style consumer/security state, and Gaza explicitly was to be impoverished...
..As Tareq Baconi writes in Foreign Policy:
“Hamas was stuck in … a “violent equilibrium,” whereby military force emerged as a means for negotiating concessions between Hamas and Israel. [Hamas used] missiles and other tactics to compel Israel to ease restrictions on the blockade, while [Israel] responds with overwhelming force to build deterrence and secure “calm” in the areas around the Gaza Strip. Through this violence, both entities operated within a framework whereby Hamas could maintain its role as a governing authority in Gaza even under a blockade that enacts daily structural violence against Palestinians”.
It is this siege paradigm for Gaza that blew up on 7 October...
..Hamas has transformed: It is now the ‘liberation movement’ that Sheikh Yasin foresaw – liberation of all living under occupation, and again, Yasin-like, is centred around non-ideological Islam on the civilisational icon of ‘Al-Aqsa’ mosque which is neither Palestinian nor Shia nor Sunni, nor Wahhabi, Brotherhood, nor Salafist.
And it is this – Hamas’ liberation framing – that chimes directly with the new global ‘independence push’ that we are witnessing today, and that perhaps explains the huge marches in support of Gaza, across the global south, as well as in Europe and the U.S. The punishment meted out to Gaza civilians has that unmissable ‘old colonial’ touch to it – one that evokes wide resonance and anger.
Hamas’ calculus is that its military resilience, plus the sustained international pressure from the Gaza massacres, ultimately may compel Israel to negotiate – and eventually reach a (costly, ‘all for all’) hostage deal with the Palestinian movement – as well as a paradigm-change in the political realm of endless ‘peace talks’ with Israel. In short, Hamas’ bet is that its military resilience will likely outlast the White House impatience to bring a speedy end to the Gaza war episode...
..Netanyahu both has to keep the war going (for his own survival), because the end of it may spell disaster for the him (and his family). Netanyahu therefore is in the midst of ‘a campaign’. It’s not an election campaign, because he has no real chance of surviving an election.
On the contrary, it is a ‘campaign for survival’ with two aims: to hang on to his seat for two more years (which is feasible as the chance of government defections is far from assured), and secondly, to preserve, or even strengthen, the slavish admiration of ‘the base’.
"Only I, Netanyahu, can prevent a Palestinian State ever coming into being in Gaza, Judea or Samaria”: “I will not allow it”. “There will never be” a Palestinian state. Only I can manage relations with Biden. Only I know how to manipulate the U.S. psyche’.
“I am leading”… not only on behalf of Jewish history, but also for western civilization.
“But what good is a long war”, Israeli correspondent, Haaretz commentator B. Michael asks,
“if at the end, or even while it’s still ongoing, the ‘base’ becomes bored and indifferent and disappointed? That’s not the kind of base that will rush to the voting booth with the right voting slip in its teeth. A base wants action. A base wants blood. A base wants to hate, to be angry, to be offended, to get revenge. To unload on ‘the other’ everything that is getting it riled up”.
“This is the only way to understand the stubborn evasion [by Netanyahu] of any serious discussion of an exit policy from the war. This is the only way to understand the groundless promises of everlasting control of Gaza”. The Base is delighted. Hopes coming true. “We’re really sticking it to the Arabs, pushing them toward the sea. And it’s all Bibi”.
“There isn’t a drop of logic to the massive bombardment in Gaza. Nor will a drop of benefit result from the killing of more Palestinians … the step is blatant foolishness and embarrassing grovelling to the base – lest it be at all disappointed by the leader. What will become of the hostages? The base is more important”.
Israel has seen this before – notably with the 1948 Nakba. The hubristic expectation that this would be the ‘end to it’ – Palestinians expelled, their property plundered and appropriated – ‘End of story’ (it was believed). ‘Problem solved’.
Yet it was never solved. Hence 7 October.
The Prime Minister and his cabinet are on a ‘campaign trail’ to seize and magnify the base’s trauma arising from the 7 October – and to mould it to their electoral needs.
Netanyahu has been repeating a single message: ‘We will not stop the fighting’. From his perspective, the war must continue forever:
“The vision of Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich and company is taking shape. And the messiah’s arrival must be just around the corner. And it’s all Bibi. Hooray for Bibi!”.
The Resistance understands and can see it all: How does Israel get out of this? Overthrowing Bibi? That won’t do it. It’s too late. The stopper is off; the genies and the demons are out.
If the ‘front’ remains co-ordinated, proceeds by consensus; eschews any Pavlovian over-reaction to events that might plunge the region into an all-out war, then:
'They can wait at leisure, whilst (Netanyahu) labours’ – and errs (Sun Tzu).
Another brilliant article from Caitlin. Possibly one of the most succinct articles which hopefully will get people to think about what values they really have.
One of the biggest issues is that western culture has imposed greed into society, whereby people are looking for financial returns, particularly on their superannuation. Incidentally, Australian Super Fund one would think that it's Australian, It's Not. One does not have to look far to see that a greedy few all but control the ASX top 200 companies, including our "big 4 banks", govt. advisory groups, political parties, in fact almost every aspect of Australian business.
Australia has all but given it's sovereignty to America with the most ridiculous "purchase of the nuclear submarines" AUKUS !!
America makes money out of war, America is a failed state which cannot even look after it's people (except for the privileged few) and those with their "snouts in the trough" so America wants a war, any war as long as they can make more money from providing arms, missiles, hardware, ships, submarines, bombers, etc.
This article from Caitlin needs to be available for all to read, not just the people who subscribe here.
"That mountain of child corpses is a much better representation of western culture than anything Mozart, da Vinci or Shakespeare ever produced."
Bravo! This shocking mental image epitomizes the audacious hypocrisy of those who hold to "western values". More like western insanity than values, really.
"We say we value freedom, justice, truth, peace and free expression, but our actions paint a very different picture. The real western values, the actual product inside the box underneath the attractive label, are the ones you see acted out in Gaza today."
Bingo. You can't sum up in words any better than what is being done in action. Westerners commit genocide. Western values are all about genocide and the murder of children obviously. Westerners should be ashamed of themselves, but they are too sociopathic to realize just how sick they are.
This might be the most important article from Caitlin - Perpetual and brazen lying is the Perfect Embodiment Of 'Western Values'.
The adherents of the western "values", "liberty", "freedom", "equality" etc bullshit religion - let this post sink in.
It is wonderfully ironic that when these right wing extremists, like Shapiro or Murray, go on talk shows to sing the praises of western values and warn of the apparent war on them, they are never asked to define what they actually are - because then the whole argument would unravel...
I cannot argue against this. I'm just exhausted these days, there is kind of a constant tension in the air, in social interactions, in trying to absorb and escape the constant barrage of media. Just dealing with more or less everyday life problems is exhausting. I'm sure I'm technically depressed, but if you're not depressed you aren't paying attention. Thanks to Caitlin for a small oasis of sanity in an increasingly fractured world.
Nothing justifies Israel’s actions in Gaza — not the Holocaust, not the Diaspora, not God telling them they are the “chosen people”. They need to reread the Old Testament. Non-Zionist Jews in NYC blocked a bridge in protest but that was barely covered in the news.
Every day, I look closely at what American culture offers me, throws at me in distraction -- usually when I'm trying to do something productive -- and mostly what I want to scream (and often I do) is "exploitation". That's what we do. We exploit: the planet, the biosphere, and anyone the culture has set up to be most susceptible to that exploitation. And it's all perpetrated with a consumerist smile that tries to make us feel so so democratic that all these choices are flung before our consciousnesses, when in reality, it's all an authoritarian push by big money to keep the destructive front of the tsunami of consumption moving forward inexorably. Once you see it, it's pure madness incarnate.
All of our congressional reps in my State pat themselves on the back over how many military contracts they "secure" for our state and how many "good paying jobs" they are creating, never for a moment considering the carnage that is left in the wake of U.S. weaponry, or that we blindly value jobs regardless of the part we play in murder across the globe.
That's the thing that really pisses me off about Capitalism. It doesn't care where it makes its money.
Israel actually has no right to exist. Really. We have to quit accepting the utterly dishonest foundations of their lies.
https://open.substack.com/pub/phillipbadger/p/yes-virginia-there-really-is-no-reason?r=ia08f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
"Hitler may have lost WW2, but fascism won." -- George Carlin.
The West, or at least Western Elites, has unleashed its Inner Nazi. We support neo-Nazis over in Ukraine, and we give practically unqualified support to the the Right Wing Extremist-Supremacists in Israel. The West has a Fascist monkey on its back that it never shook off, despite a Fairy Tale of defeating Fascism in World War 2.
Literally 2000 years in Europe. It started with barbarian Rome's claims to be "Bringing civilisation", when all it was really doing was mass slaughter and extracting loot to pay for further slaughters.
And that is all it has been ever since.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x72r71p
"The only democracy in the Mid East" is sorely in need of a tune up, or a regime change.
Yes, it is the settlement of what is now called America, Canada, New Zealand, & Australia. The violence against indigenous, the slaughter, the reservations, the smashing of customs, so it’s easy to see why these countries support Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians.😢there is no conscience!
Alastair Crooke, They Can Wait at Leisure, Whilst Netanyahu Labours – and Errs (paraphrasing Sun Tzu's Art Of War)
This man in the wheelchair and with the rickety earpiece – Sheikh Ahmad Yasin – was the founder of Hamas.
And what he said to me that morning has come to upend the Islamic world today.
What he said was: “Hamas is not an Islamic movement. It is a liberation movement, and anyone, be they Christian, or Buddhist – or even I – could join it. We all were welcome”.
Why was this simple formula somehow so significant and connected to today’s events?
Well, the ethos of Gaza, at that time (2000-2002), was predominantly that of ideological Islamism. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was deeply embedded. It was not then a resistance movement per se – it was capable of violence, but its prime focus was social work and uncorrupted governance. It wanted to show how well it could govern.
Yasin’s comment was revolutionary because liberation trumped dogma and the various ‘schools’ of political Islam. This ultimately was to become ‘Gaza Hamas’ – at odds with its conventional leadership resident in Doha. Sinwar and Dief are ‘Yasin’s children’.
‘Long story short’, a little while later, Yasin, on one of his Friday prayers’ wheel-chair trundles across the road to his adjacent mosque, was blown to pieces by an Israeli missile as he exited...
..PM Blair and President Bush put together a secret (unacknowledged to the EU) plan in response: Hamas leaders – plus the movements’ social support NGOs – were to be eliminated. And the Palestinian Authority would crack down on all and every Hamas activity – in close collaboration with Israel.
The West Bank, in this plan, would be the recipient of large financial aid to construct a prosperous western-style consumer/security state, and Gaza explicitly was to be impoverished...
..As Tareq Baconi writes in Foreign Policy:
“Hamas was stuck in … a “violent equilibrium,” whereby military force emerged as a means for negotiating concessions between Hamas and Israel. [Hamas used] missiles and other tactics to compel Israel to ease restrictions on the blockade, while [Israel] responds with overwhelming force to build deterrence and secure “calm” in the areas around the Gaza Strip. Through this violence, both entities operated within a framework whereby Hamas could maintain its role as a governing authority in Gaza even under a blockade that enacts daily structural violence against Palestinians”.
It is this siege paradigm for Gaza that blew up on 7 October...
..Hamas has transformed: It is now the ‘liberation movement’ that Sheikh Yasin foresaw – liberation of all living under occupation, and again, Yasin-like, is centred around non-ideological Islam on the civilisational icon of ‘Al-Aqsa’ mosque which is neither Palestinian nor Shia nor Sunni, nor Wahhabi, Brotherhood, nor Salafist.
And it is this – Hamas’ liberation framing – that chimes directly with the new global ‘independence push’ that we are witnessing today, and that perhaps explains the huge marches in support of Gaza, across the global south, as well as in Europe and the U.S. The punishment meted out to Gaza civilians has that unmissable ‘old colonial’ touch to it – one that evokes wide resonance and anger.
Hamas’ calculus is that its military resilience, plus the sustained international pressure from the Gaza massacres, ultimately may compel Israel to negotiate – and eventually reach a (costly, ‘all for all’) hostage deal with the Palestinian movement – as well as a paradigm-change in the political realm of endless ‘peace talks’ with Israel. In short, Hamas’ bet is that its military resilience will likely outlast the White House impatience to bring a speedy end to the Gaza war episode...
..Netanyahu both has to keep the war going (for his own survival), because the end of it may spell disaster for the him (and his family). Netanyahu therefore is in the midst of ‘a campaign’. It’s not an election campaign, because he has no real chance of surviving an election.
On the contrary, it is a ‘campaign for survival’ with two aims: to hang on to his seat for two more years (which is feasible as the chance of government defections is far from assured), and secondly, to preserve, or even strengthen, the slavish admiration of ‘the base’.
"Only I, Netanyahu, can prevent a Palestinian State ever coming into being in Gaza, Judea or Samaria”: “I will not allow it”. “There will never be” a Palestinian state. Only I can manage relations with Biden. Only I know how to manipulate the U.S. psyche’.
“I am leading”… not only on behalf of Jewish history, but also for western civilization.
“But what good is a long war”, Israeli correspondent, Haaretz commentator B. Michael asks,
“if at the end, or even while it’s still ongoing, the ‘base’ becomes bored and indifferent and disappointed? That’s not the kind of base that will rush to the voting booth with the right voting slip in its teeth. A base wants action. A base wants blood. A base wants to hate, to be angry, to be offended, to get revenge. To unload on ‘the other’ everything that is getting it riled up”.
“This is the only way to understand the stubborn evasion [by Netanyahu] of any serious discussion of an exit policy from the war. This is the only way to understand the groundless promises of everlasting control of Gaza”. The Base is delighted. Hopes coming true. “We’re really sticking it to the Arabs, pushing them toward the sea. And it’s all Bibi”.
“There isn’t a drop of logic to the massive bombardment in Gaza. Nor will a drop of benefit result from the killing of more Palestinians … the step is blatant foolishness and embarrassing grovelling to the base – lest it be at all disappointed by the leader. What will become of the hostages? The base is more important”.
Israel has seen this before – notably with the 1948 Nakba. The hubristic expectation that this would be the ‘end to it’ – Palestinians expelled, their property plundered and appropriated – ‘End of story’ (it was believed). ‘Problem solved’.
Yet it was never solved. Hence 7 October.
The Prime Minister and his cabinet are on a ‘campaign trail’ to seize and magnify the base’s trauma arising from the 7 October – and to mould it to their electoral needs.
Netanyahu has been repeating a single message: ‘We will not stop the fighting’. From his perspective, the war must continue forever:
“The vision of Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich and company is taking shape. And the messiah’s arrival must be just around the corner. And it’s all Bibi. Hooray for Bibi!”.
The Resistance understands and can see it all: How does Israel get out of this? Overthrowing Bibi? That won’t do it. It’s too late. The stopper is off; the genies and the demons are out.
If the ‘front’ remains co-ordinated, proceeds by consensus; eschews any Pavlovian over-reaction to events that might plunge the region into an all-out war, then:
'They can wait at leisure, whilst (Netanyahu) labours’ – and errs (Sun Tzu).
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2023/12/18/they-can-wait-at-leisure-whilst-netanyahu-labours-and-errs/
Another brilliant article from Caitlin. Possibly one of the most succinct articles which hopefully will get people to think about what values they really have.
One of the biggest issues is that western culture has imposed greed into society, whereby people are looking for financial returns, particularly on their superannuation. Incidentally, Australian Super Fund one would think that it's Australian, It's Not. One does not have to look far to see that a greedy few all but control the ASX top 200 companies, including our "big 4 banks", govt. advisory groups, political parties, in fact almost every aspect of Australian business.
Australia has all but given it's sovereignty to America with the most ridiculous "purchase of the nuclear submarines" AUKUS !!
America makes money out of war, America is a failed state which cannot even look after it's people (except for the privileged few) and those with their "snouts in the trough" so America wants a war, any war as long as they can make more money from providing arms, missiles, hardware, ships, submarines, bombers, etc.
This article from Caitlin needs to be available for all to read, not just the people who subscribe here.
"That mountain of child corpses is a much better representation of western culture than anything Mozart, da Vinci or Shakespeare ever produced."
Bravo! This shocking mental image epitomizes the audacious hypocrisy of those who hold to "western values". More like western insanity than values, really.
"We say we value freedom, justice, truth, peace and free expression, but our actions paint a very different picture. The real western values, the actual product inside the box underneath the attractive label, are the ones you see acted out in Gaza today."
Bingo. You can't sum up in words any better than what is being done in action. Westerners commit genocide. Western values are all about genocide and the murder of children obviously. Westerners should be ashamed of themselves, but they are too sociopathic to realize just how sick they are.
Stinging endictment. Hard not to disagree.