👉Gaza—“The unfolding catastrophe in
Gaza makes the need for a humanitarian ceasefire more urgent with every passing
hour,"
UN
Secretary General Antonio Guterres said last week, describing the Palestinian
enclave as "a graveyard for children.”
AS IT STANDS, after nearly six
weeks of Israeli bombardments of the Palestinian enclave, over 11,500 Gazans
have died. More than 4,000 of those deaths have been children. Israel’s PM,
Benjamin Netanyahu, is determined to eradicate the
militant group Hamas even at the expense of thousands of innocent civilian
lives. The 7 October attacks by Hamas on the nearby Israeli settler kibbutzim
and the woefully undermanned military outposts guarding them has upended for now the
possibility of any rationale dialogue between the two sides. Even the Security
Council (SC) of the United Nations is thus far unable to pass a resolution
calling for an immediate ceasefire in the conflict. Only as of this week was the SC able to vote on the need for "pauses" in the conflict to allow humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave:
“The Security
Council passed a resolution Wednesday calling for the immediate release of all
hostages held by Hamas and for urgent and extended humanitarian corridors
throughout the enclave to save and protect civilian lives. The affirmative vote came after
four unsuccessful efforts to take action last month.
The SC vote was 12-0 with three abstentions (Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom). Russia abstained because it wanted to see the resolution ask for an immediate ceasefire.
“Humanitarian
pauses cannot replace a ceasefire or truce,” said Russia's UN representative,
Vasily Nebenzia, who goes on to say that US pressure had watered down the
resolution. "It's a disgrace that the Council has squeezed out such a weak
call." (un.org)
The resolution followed four failed attempts of voting at the UN
Security Council regarding the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict
since Oct. 7. The US vetoed previous calls for "humanitarian pauses", claiming these would allow Hamas to regroup and retrench, and it also refused to sign off earlier because the proposed resolutions did not explicitly condemn Hamas. The Russian (and Chinese) position is that either both parties are condemned or neither party. Thus, language in the proposal that condemns either side is left out in order to get it passed.
On 26 October,
the UN’s General Assembly voted in favour of a non-binding resolution* calling
for a ceasefire and recently, on 7 November, “[t]he heads of several major United
Nations bodies on Monday made a united call for a humanitarian ceasefire in
Gaza as Israeli strikes intensify.”
AS WE HAVE SEEN in recent weeks, there have been huge protests and marches in many of the world's capitals calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Public opinion is siding with the Palestinians and this can only increase as video and eyewitness accounts of the brutal Israeli bombing campaign are made available on social media and news reports. Even our own PM got an earful from his public as he was trying to have a quiet restaurant dinner in Vancouver, the other day.
THE ISRAELI strategy has been to
cut the Gazan enclave in two and force the population of northern Gaza to move
into the southern half, while the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) concentrates on
bombing militants in the north. At least that’s what the press releases say. But
forcing over one million Gazans to flee into an already over-crowded part of their
territory is a recipe for disaster, especially when disease, hunger and lack of shelter become evident. Chris Hedges, former New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner, writes powerfully about this in a recent post.
“The United Nations Office for
the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated on Oct. 24 that more
than 1.4 million people are internally displaced (IDPs) within Gaza.
Gaza's border crossings with
both Egypt and Israel are closed, effectively trapping residents inside the enclave." (aljazerra)
And there have been some missile attacks in the southern part, as well. Where are they supposed to go? Gaza,
before 7 October, was already the most densely population region on earth. A
strip of land on the Mediterranean, it is only twenty-five miles long and 7.5
miles at its widest. About the size of Manhattan Island.
FURTHERMORE, little aid is getting through to the
besieged enclave. Israel cut supplies of fuel, food, water, and electricity (a
war crime in anyone’s books) at the start of their genocide military
operation and seems determined to bomb Gaza back to the stone age in
retaliation for the Hamas attacks which killed an estimated 1200
Israelis. In recent days there has been some humanitarian relief efforts, but far from what is needed at the moment.
MEANWHILE, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, launches
tit-for-tat missile attacks along Israel’s northern border, making the IDF
divide its forces along two fronts. So far, each side has not attempted to
dramatically escalate, instead allowing the conflict in northern Israel to ebb
and flow, as each mirrors the other in combat intensity. This is an instance of “vertical escalatory” tactics, whereby both sides go up and down
the escalatory “ladder”, letting off a bit of steam and showing their opponent
they can respond in kind to any attack. Managed properly, this calibrated
warfare will not cause one side or the other to significantly ‘up the ante’,
and it allows for a more orderly battlefield. BUT, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has stated
the militia will come to the aid of Hamas if that organization is threatened
with annihilation. Hezbollah has upwards of 100,000 fighters and thousands of missiles in their armory. So, there’s that. At a recent summit meeting of Arab countries, there were calls for an immediate ceasefire, but also statements in favour of keeping the conflict a local one, and not have it become a regional Battle Royale.
THERE ARE other ‘ladders’ in the field, however.
The United States has positioned two carrier groups in the Mediterranean, as
well as a nuclear-powered submarine in the Red Sea. American military
installations in Iraq and Syria (and ask yourself what they’re doing
there in the first place) have come under attack from insurgencies in both countries.
American ground forces and air power have responded, going up and down the escalatory
ladder, thus far keeping the fighting at a relatively low 'rung'. There are also conflicts which include horizontal escalatory tactics. For
example, should Iran come to Hezbollah’s aid, the escalatory ladder is said to
have ‘widened’, making decisions on how to respond to, or initiate, attacks a more
complex equation. The US State Department has said it does not wish to see the Gazan war
widen into a regional conflict and is so far keeping its powder dry. [That's good, but maybe for starters they can send home a carrier group at least. Just sayin’. Ed.]
Fun Fact #1: In 1963, a feasibility study on
building a canal to rival Egypt’s Suez Canal was undertaken. The proposed canal
would link the Red Sea with the Mediterranean via Israel. The original plan called
for constructing the Ben-Gurion Canal with 520 atomic bombs+, detonated underground to assist excavating the proposed 182-mile
canal through the rugged Negev Desert.😱There is scuttlebutt suggesting one
reason for leveling and depopulating Gaza is because the Palestinian enclave
is ground zero for the B-G Canal and associated port facilities.
A
SECOND reason for booting the Gazans out of their homeland and into the
Sinai
desert is because there is a whole lot of offshore
gas buried within UN-designated Palestinian waters. Following the
destruction of the Nordstream gas pipeline and the end of cheap Russian gas marketed to Europe last year,
you can bet your bottom dollar that Israel is
coveting
its neighbour’s shit, big time. So, the politicos in the Knesset seem to have decided that now is the best time to get rid of those pesky Palestinians once and for all. They’re an albatross
around the everyone’s neck. Good
riddance!
Q: Is the canal project a conspiracy theory? A: Who knows? I just hope they don’t use nukes when they
start digging….
FUN FACT #2: On a visit to Israel last week, American
Sec of State, Anthony Blinken advised Israeli’s Benjamin Netanyahu to use
“smaller bombs” in his fight against Hamas, to cut down on civilian casualties. That will do the trick! Thanks, Tony.
FUN FACT #3: Earlier this month, “Israel’s
Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu was suspended indefinitely after he said in
an interview that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was ‘one of the
possibilities,’” the government considered. WTF! The minister
was suspended from his post by an embarrassed Netanyahu, but Eliyahu has said the quiet part out loud,
namely that Israel has nuclear weapons. Israel has never declared publicly that
it possesses them, nor is it a signatory of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
(NPT). It developed its technology in secret outside the NPT’s framework, and
if it were to formally declare that it does, indeed, have nuclear weapons, then
according to US law, it would be ineligible for aid from the United States and
would be subject to sanctions. So, mums the word! The United States has given Israel over three
billion dollars in cash and military equipment annually for decades, far
more than any other country. Now, Biden is asking Congress for an additional
nine billion bucks to top up Israel’s depleting military stocks.
IT’S
THOUGHT Israel has between 90-200 warheads. So, if they accidentally lose one
over Gaza, would that be so bad? There’s plenty more where that came from. BTW,
in its nuclear deterrence policy, Israel has what’s known as the “Sampson
Option”, which states that if the country faces an existential threat and is in
danger of being overrun, Israel will launch nukes at the responsible
parties. And we all know what happened to those darn Philistines, don’t we? FUN FACT #4: During a cabinet meeting of the Israeli government at the
start of the conflict, a proposal was put forward to the effect that if Gazans
had to go—hopefully into the Sinai (bye--bye), one option might be they could apply for refugee status in Canada. How many? The report suggests 500,000.😟It’s blue-sky thinking for sure, but unfortunately for Israel it doesn’t have a
carpet big enough to sweep their Palestinian problem under. Will they keep
squeezing Gaza until something pops? Will they shovel Palestinians out the door
into the sands of the Sinai desert? The Mediterranean? Canada? We will have to
wait and see.
👉SANCTIONS—THEY
are still trying to track and sanction Russian oil as it sloshes around the
planet with some of it ending up in Europe from third parties like India. And they
want to put the kibosh on Russian diamonds to keep them from ending up in the EU, thoroughly twerking ticking off Antwerp’s diamond merchants, but they've yet to iron out bed
bugs in their tracking mechanisms. This latest package of EU sanctions against an recalcitrant
Russia includes an embargo on needles, buttons, nails, and tools such as
screwdrivers, that will no longer be exported to the
Slavic giant. This is Round #12 in the sanctions war that the EU
has doggedly imposed on itself Russia. Now comes the big knockout punch, they hope, that will
finally put Putin and those Ruskies on their collective commie keisters! The bell will
announce the winner and we all know who that will be. How can Russia possibly
survive without imported screwdrivers? YCMTSU!
👉HUCKSTER-IN-CHIEF—After
a disastrous trip to the United States this September, not to mention his cringe
worthy side-trip to Ottawa and the whole Nazi-dude tribute thing, President
Zelensky is beginning to see the writing on the wall. The US Congress is still wrangling
over whether to send more aid to Ukraine (some will probably go, but less than what Zee-Man is
asking). And not to be deterred when bucks are at stake, in a 5 November NBC “Meet
the Press” interview, the Ukrainian president asked for a loan, instead, if the
well is drying up: “If you can't give us some financial support—okay, okay please—give us a
credit, and we will give you back money after the war.” Don’t worry, man, he’s
good for it!
MEANWHILE, IN EUROPE, the
continent that can’t stop shooting itself in the foot, the EU Commission is
working out a ‘loan’ package for Ukraine to the tune of 50 billion Euros! They
can’t raise the funds directly from member states because Hungary’s Victor Orban
and the newly elected PM of Slovakia will veto such a proposal. To bypass this
roadblock, the Commission has decided the member states will take out a loans
in capital markets and hand job off the cash to Zelensky so he can buy
chateaux in France fund his government and war efforts.😲And while the EU
and the increasingly tight-pursed Americans continue to fund Ukraine’s war machine a little while
longer, does anyone think that benighted nation has a snowball’s chance in hell
of defeating Russia? GMAB! AND I think we can reasonably assume that Ukraine’s
much-ballyhooed Spring/Summer offensive has failed, at the cost of tens of
thousands of Ukrainian troops.
SO, WHAT’S LEFT? Behind the
scenes it’s thought Zelensky is being pressured to cut a deal with the Russians. It’s
also possible he’s in the crosshairs for a regime change of his own. (He's quoted as saying there may be a "Maidan" coup forming against him!) And the recently surfaced Keystone Kops story around the Nordstream pipeline
sabotage has a Ukrainian special ops commander—who just happens to be in jail on
unrelated charges—fingered for the crime. It’s likely a CIA disinfo story planted in the European press
seeking to link Ukraine with Nordstream, to give the US another excuse to opt
out of Operation Ukraine, i.e. Zelensky’s administration is a hotbed of
terrorists who blow up stuff. It's no coincidence that this bad news story comes out just as the US is hyper-focused on the Middle East. [And for the sake of our shared reality: It was the United States who blew up Nordstream last September. Not Russia. Not Ukraine. Nor were space aliens involved in the sabotage. Seymour Hersh’s reporting
confirms this for us. Ed.]
P.S. When the money dries up, the
chances of Zelensky remaining in power are nadda. So, stay tuned. When next
we see the Ukrainian president, he may be sunning himself in sunny Majorca,
albeit surrounded by bodyguards. As for
Ukraine, whatever happens will be for Russia to decide….
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The Grimace Felt Round the World
|
Have a laugh at Biden’s post-APEC summit
news conference in San Francisco last week. After a 4-hour private get-together
with China’s Xi Jinping, and after Xi had left and was on his way to the airport, Biden was asked by a reporter if he still thought
the Chinese leader was a “dictator”, something he’s said in the past. Right
on cue and heading straight for a sundowner moment, the President said yes, of
course he was a dictator. And he went on to explain why he felt that way. But for a giggle, check out the US Sec of State, Anthony Blinken. He looks decidedly green at the gills
as he sees weeks of diplomacy (in getting the Chinese leader to meet with Biden)
go circling the drain because his well-past-his-prime president just can’t shut up.
[In the vid, Blinken is the one sitting next to the guy digging wax out of his ears.
These are the 'elites' we follow? What a clown show! Ed.]
👉FLIP-O-RAMA!—It’s been a bumpy few weeks for
our once-effervescent PM, with growing public ire around his ‘non-call' for a
ceasefire in the Palestine-Israel conflict, and for Canada’s abstention in the
UN General Assembly vote on 7 November that passed in favour of an "immediate humanitarian
ceasefire.”
On 14 November, Trudeau came out during
a press conference. I mean he came out for Palestinians. He didn’t call for a
ceasefire per se, but he used strong, no-nonsense language, urging the
Israeli government to use “maximum restraint” in its pursuit of Hamas. It was a
ballsy statement. I was pleasantly surprised....
However, I think it best our
PM orders in for the next while because protestors will still be out
there dogging his steps. Waving different flags, of course.
👉SAY "CHEESE!"—I’m sorry, but I can't help myself. I just had to include this
photo of NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. He’s got this face that
just keeps on giving, if you know what I mean? The snap was taken at the Vilnius,
Lithuania NATO conference last July. Jens
got a little over excited with Finland’s ascension into the military alliance
and all the hubbub around that. He probably ate too much cake and that didn’t
help. IN THE PHOTO, Sec Gen Jens looks
like he’s just bitten into the soft gooey centre of one of those hard candies
they have sitting around in bowls all year. Either he’s tasting something that
he really doesn’t like (nor wants to swallow), or else he is doing the best damn
imitation of a chipmunk I’ve seen in years.😝
[It’s also the face of someone who takes himself
far too seriously, if I may opine on the matter. Ed.]
Cheers, Jake.
______________________________________
[Note: the United Nations Security Council has five permanent members
(US, Britain, France, Russia and China) as set out in the UN charter after
WWII. Each has a veto power. There are a number of non-permanent nations
represented at the council who bring forth proposals and amendments. Their
votes do not come with veto powers. While the 'Big Five' are the final
arbiters, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes horse trading. For example,
earlier this month, a SC resolution on the Palestinian-Israel conflict had a
12-1 council vote (with two abstentions) that left the US isolated as it used
its veto once more to turn down a resolution in favour of "humanitarian
pauses" that the rest of the council favoured. It's bad optics when you are the
only holdout for any type of ceasefire, however watered-down it may be.
Ed.]
* On 26 October, in the UN’s General Assembly, 120 countries voted
in favour of the motion calling for a humanitarian truce in the conflict
between Israel and Hamas. Fourteen countries voted against, including the U.S.,
Zambia, and the Marshall Islands. 45 abstained. Shamefully, Canada was an
abstainer.
+ Atomic bomb excavation projects don’t have a good
rep in the construction business. See a post I wrote which includes a footnote
around using nukes for such purposes, here. A
1962 test series in Nevada studied the feasibility of using atomic bombs to
excavate ports and had the seriously ironic code name of “Operation
Ploughshares.” I don’t think the tests went well. LOL!
AFTERMATH of the “Storax Sedan” 104 kt TNT A-Bomb test explosion. Yucca
Flats, Nevada. July 12, 1962. The explosion created the largest man-made crater in the United States,
albeit a radioactive one. Note the roads leading up to the blast site to give you some perspective on its size. “The radioactive fallout from the test contaminated more US residents
than any other nuclear test.” Nice job, guys! [By way of comparison: The Hiroshima A-bomb had a 15 kt TNT yield. The Nagasaki bomb, had a 25kt TNT yield.
The largest thermonuclear (aka Hydrogen) bomb ever detonated was the Soviet "Tsar Bomba". It was air dropped on 30 October, 1961 over Severny Island in the Barents Sea, in the former USSR's far north. It's explosive yield was 50,000 kt of TNT. Bang! Ed.]
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