"Hamas apparently knew how to get around Israel's Iron Dome defenses. They probably learned this from Iran. Iran almost certainly got the information from Russia. And who gave it to Russea? Sure looks like it was Donald Trump, at the request of Putin" - Tom Hartmann
I always respected Hartmann. I have to guess he ate a bad mushroom or something.
All commentary on the the carpet-bombing of the Gaza Strip makes a point of condemning the recent Hamas incursion as a War Crime. But this falls a bit short of today's reality. In this age of total surveillance (the prevailing economic logic now), war is a crime at which we can no longer feign surprise. After decades of subjecting a couple of million already-traumatized people to relentless collective punishment, eventually there may come an insanely violent response. And reading Sy Hersh, it's even harder to believe this one could have been a surprise.
We can't feign surprise that our taxes go to the Israeli state to the tune of nearly four billion a year, which boomerangs into the coffers of the weapons manufacturers like a paddleball toy. Yet if you want to see some quick evasive action, ask any politician of any party about that. The old joke says Israel won't accept statehood because then they would only get two senators.
Netanyahu's response to the attack he failed utterly to prevent is certainly unsurprising. He has explained his thinking recently with this explicit equation:
"Today, anti-Semitism is anti-Zionism. Those who oppose the Jewish people oppose the Jewish state." (Lex Friedman interview with Netanyahu, "Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace")
Using Bibi-logic, then, Hamas is Palestine, and anti-Hamas is anti-Palestinian, so killing anything that moves in Gaza is a legitimate and righteous thing to do.
And if he says this genocide exemplifies his religion, as Netanyahu's equation certainly implies, that would make him antisemitic, himself, if I understood the parts of the Bible our respective traditions seem to share. Some American politicians have jumped on this bandwagon too, which is complicating for more than one religious institution.
Now that yet another massacre of thousands of noncombatants is in full swing, with the enthusiastic encouragement of what used to call itself "The Free World," including footage of Blinken greeting Bibi like an old pal, and footage of Biden mumbling that if there was no Israel the U.S. would have to invent it, a question looms in my fevered brain: Who's next?
There are massacres lined up around the world waiting to happen. Many are already running, but have fallen out of the "news cycle." The Americans seem to be kind of busy just now. There is no Legislative Branch, it just canceled itself out. The Executive is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street, and the War Economy is booming. SCOTUS? I can't even say its name. Barrel-bottom candidates and their bot-driven media organs squabble over fractional "approval" rating percentage points, at which the public jeers.
In this Attention Age, attention gets power, and power gets attention. So every stunt has to out-do the last one. No proposal to repeal human rights, legalize genocide, crush all dissent, or deregulate toxic waste is too over-the-top. Now I suppose the talented Zalensky will have to gin up something really horrendous to get back in the spotlight (and the money).
And now we're flooding all the zones with uranium munitions that leave the earth, like too many newborn babies in Fallujah, "incompatible with life." Will Israel nuke Iran? Will Pakistan and India nuke each other? Or maybe North Korea will nuke, I don't know, itself? It won't matter. The minute a mushroom cloud appears we will end.
We don't have to end. All we have to do is stop. The American administration could stop it all, in an hour, with a keystroke or two.
But they're intoxicated with all the money and power that comes from a game for which they make the rules. American values are hostage to principles of domination and enslavement on which we built this empire centuries ago. Our present predicament is the logical outcome. Why give up a good thing? (Just kidding.) (One has to insert these disclaimers these days, where our shriveled sense of humor used to be.)
All in all, I have to conclude that Hartmann isn't an isolated case of AI-induced journalistic dementia. It looks now as if humanity is collectively, suicidal.
