Israel in the age of Islamic State

The arrogant Likudniks who have been running the show in Israel for the last 25 years today announced another 300 settler homes on Palestinian territory in the West Bank.

As every Israeli who gives these matters any thought whatsoever already understands, that's going to inflame resistance all over again.

The "resistance" these days is largely confined to teens throwing stones at settler vehicles.

Ya, I know there's those deadly Gaza rockets that never manage to hit anything, but by and large, those stone-throwers are the "resistance."

Their resistance has recently been further criminalized by the introduction of a 20 year jail term for the stone-throwers.

While that is going on, the Likudniks have been cynically annexing the Golan, because what the hell is Assad going to do about it?

We'll just help ourselves to those oil and gas resources while Mr. Assad is otherwise occupied.

Does nobody in the Likudnik power structure see where they are taking their country?

There may be folks high up in the IDF who think they have a handle on what's going on across the borders, and at this point the upheaval is ongoing across every border.

You've got a highly unpopular non-democratic government in Egypt tamping down the fires in the Sinai.

Lebanon is practically an anarchic state, as Syria and Iraq are already.

Jordan is on the brink.

And Netanyahu concludes that this is the moment to announce 300 settler homes in the West Bank!

Yes, it may be great PR to humour some of those IS guys who show up at the border seeking medical attention. But is there a long-term strategy at work in the Netanyahu cabinet?

The closest thing that the Likudniks have ever had to a "long term strategy" is the belief that when and if the shit hits the fan, the USA will come to the rescue.

It might be time to give that strategy a good re-think.

Will Kasasbeh execution rally Jordan behind America's "War on Terror?"

It's a particularly brutal chapter in a brutal war; Islamic State has allegedly executed Jordanian Air Force pilot Muath Kasasbeh by burning him alive.

Jordan has been one of the more delicate dominoes in the region, with a sizeable minority of the population being sympathetic to Islamic State. Why would Islamic State deliberately undermine their support in Jordan by providing the regime with this incendiary rallying point for anti-Islamic State propaganda?

This just doesn't add up, unless...

Jordan on edge after ISIS win; celebrates campaign against smoking instead

Ya, it's not looking great in the war on terror... but by golly, look how we're doing in the war on cigarettes!

In fact, that's what took the life of Eric Garner, didn't it?

He was selling duty-free smokes in the street. That's why he had to be strangled to death. A policeman was enforcing the cigarette taxes.

That is so far beyond fucked up, I'm not even going to try to make a joke of it.

Jordan is on the cusp of revolutionary change. The big dogs in Jordan, who are pretty much invisible dogs in Washington and Brussels, are declaring war on cigarettes, when one of their warplanes just got shot down by fellow Arabs while carrying out a bombing mission on fellow Arabs.

This is, to say the least, confusing.

But I'm guessing the Jordanians can figure it out...

Some thoughts on the international refugee crisis

There's a minor flap afoot in Canada about our shameful response to the Syrian refugee crisis. At this point in time, Canada has admitted a grand total of 750 or thereabouts Syrian refugees.

For all of our grandiose talk of human rights, we pull up lame when it comes to delivering.

Right now well over a million Syrian refugees are holed up in both Turkey and Lebanon. Well over half a million in Jordan. There are almost a quarter million Syrian refugees in Iraq!

How desperate would you have to be to seek refuge in Iraq? Iraq is itself a major source of refugees in the global refugee equation.

The news that Canada is cherry-picking potential refugees based on their religious affiliation should give pause for thought too. A refugee is a refugee. A human being is a human being. Politicizing the refugee process makes Canadian government bureaucrats no different than the Nazi operatives who were charged with deciding who goes to a work camp and who goes to a death camp.

Here's another thing about the refugee crisis. All the top refugee source countries are countries in which the Nations of Virtue (EU, NATO) have been heavily meddling. Until we decided on regime change in Syria, the top source countries were Iraq and Afghanistan. Syria now tops the list. It's not hard to see what these nations have in common.

Here's a policy suggestion that I hope somebody in Ottawa will read; lets eliminate the Temporary Foreign Worker program entirely, and meet our labour needs by bringing in refugees! That's a win-win and win again.

Out with 400,000 TFWs, in with 400,000 refugees.

We have every reason to believe that a Syrian or Iraqi refugee, allowed into Canada, would be every bit as productive a worker as the TFWs from Mexico or Bangladesh. And this would ease the pressure on countries like Lebanon and Jordan, allies who are groaning under their refugee burden, and who are at considerable risk of becoming adjunct states to the Caliphate.

The only downside is this; if the Harper government actually instituted such a humane and sensible policy, those 400,000 new refugee-immigrants might be inclined to vote for him...

Pot apologizes for calling kettle "black"

I see where the dunce Joe Biden has had to do a bit of a climb-down and apologize to Turkey's wily Erdogan for having suggested that Turkey has facilitated the entry of Islamic extremists into Syria.

Biden was correct in making that accusation of course. Turkey has been complicit in flooding Syria with anti-Assad rebels from the beginning of the "Syrian Spring." What Biden failed to mention was that Turkey was doing America's bidding at the time.

Those were the hopeful days when every anti-Assad rebel was a "freedom fighter" and Assad had only a few days or weeks to go before his brutal police state crumbled and democracy bloomed forth in its stead...

Another great example of plans going off the rails...

Now of course those freedom fighters have morphed into the most evil evildoers of all time. They are running wild throughout Syria and Iraq, sporting the best and the latest of American armaments, and threatening to over-run Jordan and Lebanon in the short term, and the rest of the neighbourhood a few months later.

To which the Nations of Virtue, who created this fanatical killing machine, are responding with yet another iteration of a "coalition of the not-so-willing" who propose to eliminate this threat to American hegemony in the Middle East by carpet bombing the Middle East.

That's bound to win us lots more hearts and minds...

"Lucky" Gazans with acute injuries get life-line to Jordan hospitals- but it takes ten days

Yup, that's what you want to hear when you show up at the ER; see you in ten days.

These are the depths that the National Newspaper of Record (and, yes, most people who think and read still put the NYT ahead of the Washington Post; sorry Bezos) will sink to in their desperation to wring happy stories out of Israel's latest attack on Gaza.

But it will have to do, because there's not much to work with.