Guardian article on the latest Israel/Palestine crisis is very informative. Not so much about the crisis but more about the Guardian/western media perspective.  Beaumont carefully describes the fears of the Israeli Occupying power and then includes small factoids from the Palestinian perspective: much ado about masters and then also slaves have a tough time.

Werst still are the lies. The statement that "the fear is equally palpable among Palestinians" is extremely dishonest. First of all, Israelis fear knife attacks, the Palestinians fear aerial bombing and house demolishing, Peter. Secondly, most of the "Palestinians" in this story are Israeli citizens and should be treated as citizens in a real country.

Fascinating story on ITV tonight about Brittan allegations and deputy Labour leader Tom Watson. The TV version was even better with a very aggressive attack on Watson (old UK TV is dead, it's now all Fox news-style). Watson has committed the fatal flaw of attacking a member of the British establishment. That will not be allowed. The establishment media who have attacked Corbyn at every point will use this as an excuse to continue. The new Labour leadership will be crushed.

The beautiful example was this quote form Lord Brittan's brother: "I was brought up to believe the English police were very special and that they didn’t make allegations... until they thought they had a cast iron case in which they could take to court,"

So the police are very special and do not murder black people or Brazilian tube passenger? And have cast iron cases such as the Birmingham Six and the Maguire family?  English readers use Google.

But even better is that the police are "English" ... not "British" ... which was temporarily essential after the Scottish vote.

I have a confession to make.  I'm not angry about this. I'm delighted. Being Irish I relish in the fact that the pretend UK/Britain thing is becoming transparently ridiculous.  When Irish or Scottish people ignore the UK we're just troublemakers; but when the British establishment does it - it's dead.

Arab Winter advances

The media was full  of the 'Arab spring' but all I could see was Egypt reverting from an Arab democracy into a traditional military-ruled US puppet state; Syria collapsing into mass chaos. Where are the spring shoots in those scenarios. Now we have the Yemen where so called Arab 'Coalition airstrikes' (who invented that phrase?) bombing the Yemeni Shias into submission. The scary part of this story is not that the medieval Arab kingships (that are all US clients) are now attacking a fellow Arab state, to defeat their fellow Arab Shia. The big story is that this is being discussed as a "renaissance" of Arab power.

Spare me the bullshit. The Arab states, especially super-rich Saudi Arabia have done nothing ( a big fat zero) to help their fellow Arabs in the Occupied Territories, have stood by while the hated Israelis continue to settle Arab land and the holy city of Al-Qud. But now; after 50 years of Jewish control of Arab lands, there are plenty of Arab bombers to attack  other Arabs in the Yemen!

Needless to say the pathetic Western media is cheering on this campaign. But where are the Arab nationalists; is there no sense of pride: no sense of shame in the Sunni Arab middle classes of the middle east?

Israel election and the Peace Process illusion

Netanyahu wins the Israeli election with a promise of ending the promised two-state solution.

In the high farce, the smoke and mirrors that is international politics, this is supposed to be a disaster, and there is general relief when 'Bibi' retracts a little after the election. 

But for those with a brain and some small education it is obvious that all these small changes these little tacks of course and direction are irrelevant in the ongoing plan to complete the Jewish settlement of historical Palestine alongside the 'removal' of the indigenous Arabs.

I think the situation is best described by Dimi Reider, an Israeli journalist and researcher at the European Council on Foreign Affairs in his comments on aljazeera (full article here), with my emphasis:

"He [Netanyahu] won’t outright announce a one-state solution and annexation because the illusion of the possibility of a two-state solution is what has allowed Israel to implement his de-facto one-state solution,"

How apt. The big question is this. How is the EU and the US involved in this illusion?  If they have been duped (over two decades) then they are incredibly stupid. The alternative, which is worse, is that they have not been duped, but have been taking part in the illusion.  Worse, morally and politically,  but still more likely to be the case.

Meanwhile the EU denounces Russia for annexing Crimea (which is full of Russians) and exacts savage sanctions on Iran for a nuclear weapon that might be built some time in the future.

Kafka and George Orwell could not make this up.

Wow ... huge reaction to the attack on the French "satirical" magazine Hebdo. Understandable; since it was so violent. Less clear is the so-called free speech argument. Apparently 'we' in the "West" are all for free speech; especially when it involves religious minorities? You'd think so if you looked at the comments on every Guardian article which universally demand mass reprinting of the offending cartoons.  Funny how there weren't so many demands for free speech in the previous French offending minorities story? Two years ago a Twitter trend hashtag BonJuif (which had some undeniably anti_Jewish overtones) trended massively in France. That was immediately closed by Twitter and there was a lot of denunciation of the Tweeters .. not one word of comment in the media about censorship.

Obviously Jewish pressure groups closing a Twitter feed is not equivalent to Islamic fanatics killing cartoonists ; two different worlds. But spare me the free speech argument. You can't say Bonjuif and hint at anti-Jewishness but you can put depic the Muslim prophet being fucked in the ass!

On free speech the French establishment; Europe; and a lot of Guardian readers: all hypocrits.

West turns blind eye to civilians killed by Ukraine

First there was the Ukrainian mob in Odessa that trapped hundreds of ethnic Russians in an old building on fire where the Russians burned to death while the local Ukrainian police stood by and did nothing.

Embarrassing for the western backers of Ukraine? Not at all. there wasn't a peep of protest from the great western guardians of human rights.  After all just a few nasty Russians being killed by our local Ukrainian fascists (bit like 1942 again).

Recently we had the western powers denouncing the rebels for not securing the Malaysian plane crash site. Since then the Ukrainian forces have launched an offensive in the area, threatening to damage the site and making it dangerous for investigators.  Do we hear a peep of protest from the West? Not a bit, not even a criticism from the Dutch despite all the public tears the week before.

Finally we have the latest Ukrainian offensive using massed artillery bombardments on civilian areas (aka Israel in Gaza). Once more ... not a peep from the hypocrits in the West.

Ireland vote on Gaza inquiry

You have to hand it to the Irish representative to the UN Human Rights Committee and her EU colleagues for abstaining en masse in the recent vote for a inquiry in Gaza. Not because I agree with her or her colleagues but because it absolutely confirms general suspicions about the EU and its role in the world.

By this vote the EU has confirmed two things. First it intends to continue its traditional role in the Middle east of hand-wringing combined with no action; intentionally leaving the field clear for the US and Israel to continue their campaign of war and general mayhem, but leaving the EU 'unstained' on the side. Second it confirms once more how out of touch the EU is with its own citizens. In a week when there very many large protests which were almost universally sympathetic to the Palestinian cause we see the EU elite effectively supporting the Israeli position.