Poltava to Gaza to Venezuela to RT and the First Amendment

I found the topics raised by Judge Napolitano in his interview with Max Blumenthal yesterday, together with Blumenthal’s responses, particularly illuminating, and I wanted to share them with you. The range of topics in itself helps to bring us up to date in a domain of conflict information whose volume grows more unweildy and oppressive by the day.

This is not a transcription, far from it, and in at least one or two places I have erred in the direction of editorializing or rephrasing Blumenthal in a manner he might not altogether feel at home with (though surely not by much). But, no matter, here is what has resulted:

Did a US military officer, Lt. Col. Joshua Kamara, who was reported to have died in Poland, actually die in the Russian hit on the military academy in Poltava a few days ago, and in which a number of Swedish and Polish trainers are said to have also been killed? Blumenthal comments, first of all, that the US mainstream media are making it seem that what happened in Poltava was some kind of epic massacre, whereas actually it needs to be seen as retaliation for constant random Ukrainian attacks on civilian targets in Belgorod.

We dont know if Kamara actually died in Poltava; it is not unreasonable to think he might have been and that this was then obscured in order to avoid some kind of further notching up of the escalation between Russia and the USA.

This would not be unprecedented. There is a precedent from the Trump administration when the US attempted to cover up the brain injuries suffered by dozens of US soldiers in an Iranian strike on a US base in Iraq in retaliation for the Trump-ordered assassination of Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani in 2020. We also have the case of a NATO military training base on the Polish border which has long been training Ukrainian troops, and when Russia hit that base in 2022 there were scores of deaths among NATO trainers and volunteers for the so-called Georgian Legion, auxiliary force fighting alongside Ukrainian soldiers filled with European and US mercenaries. There has never been an official NATO investigation.

Were the six hostages recently killed in Gaza, whose deaths led to mass Isrseli demonstrations against the Netanyahu government, actually killed by Israel itself? Blumenthal is inclined to think that is the case (albeit, as we shall see, in a roundabout way), given that Israel, applying the Hannibal Directive, has killed over forty or more of the hostages directly or, more indirectly through carpet bombing of the Gaza strip.

One of the hostages, a prominent journalist who was freed by an Israeli special forces operation, had nearly been killed in captivity by an Israeli air strike that left her with shrapnel in her head. She was saved by her Hamas guards. Two hostages who were with her at that time were killed by Israeli strikes.

In the rescue operation that saved her (but which killed an entire family in an adjacent apartment) IDF forces were disguised as humanitarian aid workers, putting the local humanitarian NGO community at risk. When the disguised IDF soldiers were found out and caught at a market with the hostage, identified by Israeli intelligence, Hamas opened fire and Israel dropped six 2,000 pound bombs on the market.

These killed over 150 civilians, half of them children. At least 150 innocent Palestinian lives in exchange for one Israeli hostage.

Following the massacre, Hamas adopted a policy whereby if IDF forces are seen closing in on a location where hostages are being kept, then Hamas will execute the hostages. The message to the Israelis is that the only way they will get the hostages or prisoners of war back is through negotiation. That is why, in this most recent case of the six hostages, they were executed by Hamas.

Yet Netanyahu is rejecting any deal for the release of the hostages until he can secure a permanent Isrsaeli presence in the Netzarim corridor that splits Gaza into two, and the Philadelphi corridor that cuts Gaza off from Egypt. Netanyahu claims that the Egyptian government is not doing enough to secure the Philadelphi corridor; Egypt insists that it does. Even Netanyahu’s closest rival, Benny Gantz says that if Israel patrols the border they will be taken out by Hamas snipers.

Tony Blinken has referred to Netanyahu’s rejectionism by referring to it as “generous offers,” giving Netanyahu the cover he needed to push back even on Biden who had criticized his obstructionism. The six hostages had been put forward by Hamas in early July as candidates for an exchange in the event of a ceasefire deal that Netanyahu then sabotaged.

One of the hostages was an Israeli-American who had chosen to fight for the Israeli military. He has been referred to by Tony Blinken as an American hero, as though Blinken can see no daylight between the two separate powers of Israel and the US. Blinken used no such words for another American who was escorting World Central Kitchen aid workers through Gaza when they were killed in a deliberate drone attack by Israel. This gentleman was actually doing something really heroic, and who had a wife and child in the US, yet about whom the US administration has had virtually nothing to say.

Netanyahu keeps stalling and stalling and even NYT commentator Thomas Friedman says today that the only reason Netanyahu continues dragging the process out is to secure his own political future and delay his inevitable reckoning.

Netanyahu is trying to elect Trump because they share the same pro-Zionist donor, Miriam Adelson.

What is going on between Netanyahu and Gantz? Gantz is clearly campaigning against Netanyahu. He hopes to be Netanyahu’s replacement, and is holding Netanyahu responsible for the denuding of the north of Israel as a result of the fact that Hezbollah is still active on the border south of the Litani river and Netanyahu has failed to protect Israelis living in the north.

But Gantz could not assume power and implement a raft of new policies without causing major political instability. His would be seen as an American controlled administration and would face enormous opposition from the settlers and the institutions that the settler and religious nationalist movement have penetrated and which now include the Israeli Police under the control of Ben-Gvir, who stood down when settler fanatacs raided the military base in which soldiers were being held prior to determination as to whethere they would go on trial for sodomizing Palestinian prisoners. Not only were the soldiers not facing charges, but hooligans were allowed to rampage through the base and Justice Ministry.

We are looking at continuing domestic instability for Israel and Blumenthal does not see a ceasefire as likely.

Is Israel on the verge of collapse? Blumenthal does not think it is on the verge of collapse as a cohesive Jewish state so long as the US is pouring billions of dollars and training into its preservation. It has nuclear weapons and a blue water Navy. It will do whatever is necessary to preserve its demographic and political supremacy over the indigenous population. But the old Israel, Israel as a European implant in the post-colonial Middle East, is fading. It is becoming more unpleasant for the more liberal elements of society, and more in keeping with fanatic Zionism.

One measure of the change that is occurring is the result of polling of popular attitudes to the idea of prosecuting the 12 prison guards in a torture camp in the Negev desert who gang-raped Palestinian prisoners on camera. 65% of Israelis do not believe they should be prosecuted. Only 23% believe they should be prosecuted.

Yet not to prosecute these people is to undermine Israel as a law-governed entity. Those who believe in the rule of law are increasingly isolated. As a character in a podcast recently demonstrated, in English, the majority of Israelis, given the chance, would push a button if it were to eliminate every Palestinian. The fascistic theocrats right now are the happiest people in Israel; the liberals, the intellectuals, Leonard Cohen enthusiasts, not so much.

What possible moral justification can there by for the US seizure of a Venezuelan jet belonging to the Veneuelan government, fueling it and flying it to Miami? A US State Department official declared that this was due to Venezuelan President Maduro’s “misgovernance.” The bogus claims being made are that Maduro rigged the election against US-planted Edmundo Gonzalez, the puppet of Maria Machado, another US puppet, and that he violated US-imposed sanctions when the plane was bought in the US. The underlying and deeply hypocritical presumption is that US elections are as clean as a whistle and command absolute trust. This is supposedly the basis for US international piracy. The US previously stole Venezuela’s most profitable foreign asset, the company Citgo by “appointing” its own “president” (Juan Guaido) and making Citgo his responsibility. The US “gangster government” has stolen several oil tankers belonging to Venezuela (just as it has stolen several Iranian tankers, simply taking and reselling their oil); it has crippled Venezuelan power systems on multiple occasions, using electro-magnetic pulse attacks; it has staged two military coups and it has sanctioned the economy to death, forcing many Venezuelans out of the country to seek a future in neighboring countries or in the US. All this as Tony Blinken runs around the world preaching the virtues of a “rules-based order.”

Is Merrick Garland’s recent indictment of two Russian nationals associated with RT and who spent $10 million on a company, Tenet, run by Lauran Chen, a far-right influencer, actually an assault on the First Amendment? A law signed by Biden last April, Napolitano interjects, makes it a crime to knowingly help a foreign government spread misinformation, involving the government in evaluating the content of speech, the very thing that the First Amendment was written to prohibit. Blumenthal speculates whether it is possible that RT has been penetrated by US intelligence in a gambit intended to discredit the company, set unwitting influencers up for massive embarrassment over very sparse content, and (I would add) to provide more bogus evidence of Russia as the evil influencer of US elections (so cravenly manipulated by the US’ own corporate and plutocratic elites) a concept that ws so roundly discredited the last time this was tried? Blumenthal concludes, however, that there are considerations here that have to do with FERA, in addition to those that have to do with the First Amdenment. (I would say that FERA has now become the bogus pretext of choice for censuring any speech that acknowledges NATO responsibility for deliberately provoking a war with Russia over Ukraine, and that bewails in righteous disgust the continuing 50-year narrative of Israeli genocide of Palestinians).