Evil and Lunacy
I am on the move today, but will try to provide brief updates if I have the opportunity.
For the time being a brief note:
Palestine
The WHO confirms that Israel’s blockade of Gaza is responsible for mass starvation of the population of Gaza. This extends to western news agency journalists trapped in the enclave.
The latest round of talks between Hamas and the US has broken down. There will be no ceasefire.
Responsibility for the genocide, of course, lies not only on the head of Netanyahu and his ruling cabal and on the majority of the Israeli people who appear to support mass murder, but also on most Western leaders and almost the entirety, I would say, of the US Congress. And on the head of the witless Witkoff, king of useless ceasefire talks, too stubbornly pro-Zionist even to save two million people from death by starvation.
Macron of France wont escape final judgment either despite his pledge to formally announce French support for a Palestinian State at the UN in September. How many tens of thousands of Palestinians will have died of starvation or of having been murderously shot by the IDF or its CIA-backed collaborator the GHF before Macron flies into New York for this momentous King Macron moment?
France will join Spain, Ireland and Norway but most of the major powers have not backed an independent Palestine; some, like Britain, are directly involved in supporting the Zionist agenda and the starvation in Gaza and its politicians may one day be held accountable for their crimes.
While the matter may seem academic at the moment, serious thinking about how an independent Palestine could be implemented has yet to take place, because serious thinking knows that for such a measure to really work, this is more than just a matter of justice for Palestine, but a matter of reinvestigating the very origins of the Israeli state and correcting the mistakes that were then made.
The villainous Netanyahu denounces France and asks how Israel could be expected to live side-by-side with a State that would become a platform for attacks on Israel, when of course it is Israel that is launching attacks on its Palestinian neighbors, in effect its colonies.
O the very same day that Marcon made his announcement, the Israeli Knesset has passed legislation to annexe the West Bank (much of which is usually identified as land that would accommodate a Palestinian State were this ever to be implemented), possibly a prelude to further extension of the displacement and genocide of Palestinians, three to four million of them, in the West Bank, for the immediate benefit of the 500,000 or so illegal settlers on those lands and for the further implementation of the expansion of the apartheid state of Israel. Some media reports call the Knesset vote”symbolic,” and talk about an Israeli plan to annex not all but 30% of the West Bank.
More detail here:
Israel Is Changing The Legal System Governing The West Bank
Here is the usual tepid reponse from the UN as reported by AP:
“U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed hope Tuesday that Israel will hear global calls and will not go ahead with annexation of parts of the West Bank, which would undermine a two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” He did add: “annexation would be not only against international law but it would be a major factor to destabilize the region.”
Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war and has built dozens of settlements that are now home to nearly 500,000 Israelis, but it never formally claimed it as an Israeli territory due to stiff international opposition.
In the meantime, of course, the Trump Administration is busily shutting down free speech and has successfully corraled leading US universities into outlawing condemnation of Israel for its genocidal behavior in Palestine.
In my post yesterday I discussed the broader context of an expanding Israel, taking territory in Syria and Lebanon and Iraq. At the heart of this tragic descent into lawlessness is the US-induced collapse of Syria. And, as always, among the principal culprits for the “no rules-based global order” whether helping to tear down Hussein’s Iraq on false pretext, or Gadaffi’s Libya on false pretext, or helping Israel to starve Palestinians, etc. etc., standing proudly alongside its Washington master, is Britain:
MI6 Embedded With Syria's Al Qaeda Government
Climate Change
The international court of justice has determined that states that do not seek to reduce greenhouse emissions may be in violation of international law.
In the US Trump seeks to defang the EPA essentially and in effect to stop it doing anything about climate change. This at a time when multiple, well-researched reports confirm the acceleration of the planet to points of little return or no return.
The people of the US and of the world are under attack by the US government and the oligarchic-corporate class which controls it, which facilitates and enables mass starvation and seems willingly to commit to an ecocide - fatal, it goes without saying, to the human species.
Ukraine
Meanwhile, in Ukraine civil protests appear to have forced Zelenskiy to commit to new legislation that would reinstate the two US- and EU controlled anti-corruption agencies that he has just legislated out of existence (because, most people think, it was being used to get at figures close to Zelenisky and his closest advisers) or at least that he had tried to place under the control of the Prosecutor General. We don’t quite know yet what exactly Zelenskiy is proposing but it seems to be a climbdown. Some reports however say that Zelenskiy may move the two agencies under his direct control - something which would further alarm Europe and undermine Ukraine’s passage to EU membership status (which Russia is unlikely to tolerate in any case).
Opinions vary considerably on the implications of this for the future of Zelenskiy, but I note that Dima of the Military Summary Channel considers that the success of the popular unrest in forcing Zelenskiy to retreat may have given civil society a taste for what they can do even against a proto-dictatorial regime.
A resumption of the protests will tend to confirm this judgement. If elements of the military and of the oligarchic class begin to join or support the protests then maybe Zelenskiy is indeed on his last legs. He could be replaced by factions that are predisposed to making concessions to Russia, or by factions that will continue the same Western-instigated forever war against Russia (which is tantamount to complete defeat, at the end of the day, something that actually creates more problems for Russia than Russia really wants or needs). Removal of Zelenskiy would likely lead quickly to fresh elections for the Presidency and for the RADA and provide Putin with a legitimate interlocutor with whom to sign an eventual Ukrainian surrender (which seems increasingly on the cards with the likely fall of Pokrovsk in the coming weeks). Reports of enhanced flows of US and European weapons may (but may not) actually be true, but are very unlikely at this stage to make much difference on the battlefield.
In the meantime, check out:
Western Media Admits: Humanitarian Catastrophe in Ukraine
I was impressed earlier today by Scott Ritter’s utter contempt for German Chancellor’s commitment to what would be a transition from a Western-imposed Bundeswehr to a Fourth Reich (Merz wants a chance to, in his words, “do it right this time,” by which he can only mean another chance to march through Poland and invade Russia, from the weak foundation of an economy in recession, having to pay an exorbitant amount for its energy, having to borrow money so as to be able to buy its weapons from the US, with an army that, like most European armies, is small and insufficient and in relatively mediocre physical condition, one that would have to be conscripted (poorly motivated) with a weaponry (US or other) that needs a dozen years before it can begin to match what Russia already has today, all with the feeble support, at best, of even less impressive failed former imperial states.
A good time to consult: