Bye-bye Bibi

I've been waiting to write those words for quite some time, so this should be a happy day. While I'll miss mocking The Greatest Leader Since Moses, there are storm clouds on the horizon.

First of all, I don't see Bennett and the Arab list co-existing in the same coalition more than a few weeks, or at least till Netanyahu is safely out of the picture. Then there'll be another election.

What I said a few years ago, that in the current climate Bibi is a moderate, is going to be proven true.  The next new government after the new government forming today will shed the Arabs and the "centrists," bind with the post-Bibi Likud, and take Israel even further right, if such a thing can be imagined.

Secondly, we're in the midst of a sea-change in US public opinion. Last week I saw a headline on MSNBC that read, "Israel needs to address the Palestinians in a new way. We need to address Israel in a new way."

That's MSNBC, folks.

There are words going into the Congressional Record these days that could not even have been imagined before the Biden government came in. Those in denial will say that's just because he's pandering to the radical wing of the party.

He is! But that's what should be cause for second thoughts among the Israeli political class. Traditionally, the party pandered to its Jewish wing.

A further tilt to the extreme right, just as American support is wavering, is a disaster waiting to happen.

Donald Trump, disposable doofus

I've said it before, but it bears repeating; the decision making powers of President Donny J don't extend too far beyond whether he's gonna have KFC or Micky D's for lunch.

Real decisions are made elsewhere.

Between COVID-19 and the collapse of the stock market, the odds of Trump winning a second term are becoming increasingly remote. But what a bonanza his four year term has been for the folks behind the curtain!

Relations with Russia are completely down the shitter. Ditto China. The Iran deal is out the window. The screws are tightening on "rogue" states like Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Meanwhile, for the Likud crowd, every day has been Christmas Day since Trump's inauguration. Whether it's gifting Golan, whacking Soleimani, or moving the embassy to Jerusalem, they love Santa Trump in the Holy Land.

So sit tight for a few months, and America should be back to "normal," to the great relief of the American political establishment. They won't roll back any of Trump's deeply counterproductive decisions, but at least the Orange Ogre will no longer distract the world with his tweets.

Instead, they'll  celebrate a "safe" president, a guy with a thirty plus year record of screwing over working class Americans, a guy who appears to be a few laps ahead of me on the Alzheimer Speedway.

The fix is obviously in, and nobody raises any serious questions about it. How exactly did Buttigieg go from winning Iowa to endorsing Biden less than a month later? How is it possible for the Dem leadership race to be over after the first three primaries?


Yes, Trump was an aberration. A guy with zero political experience, he'd been a Clinton funder and all-round pal since Bill was running for governor in Arkansas. The Clintons thought it might be fun to see their pal stir up shit on the Republican side, and whoopsie, Trump grabbed the ball and kept running.

The rest, as they say, is history, but don't worry; there'll be plenty more history coming down the pike soon enough.

Ramping up the hokum at Global Affairs Canada

Never imagined I'd say this, but I miss Bullshittin' Baird.

Those were simpler days, and Big John always wore his heart on his sleeve. When John was "deeply concerned" you always got a sense that, at some level, he probably was.

With the Trudeau crowd, you're pretty sure they're only "deeply concerned" if the object of their concern has passed muster with the usual partisan focus groups.

With the Harper Gang, the hypocrisy was hit and miss.

With the Sunny Daze Gang, the hypocrisy is systemic.

Take a gander at the Global Affairs website. The last three news items are about gender equality in Ethiopia, Canada's leadership in global gender equity, and Canada's leadership role in calling out the horrific human rights situation in Iran.

You know Iran; the only Middle East country outside of Israel where Jews are constitutionally protected, and a country where women have never NOT had the right to drive cars. Ya, that country. We're really upset about their human rights...

Yup, no way we'd ever sell those guys military hardware, because that would just be wrong, and besides, our besties in Likud wouldn't like it. We'll call out human rights in Iran, but we'll spout nonsense non-stop about Israel's right to defend itself while the human rights of Palestinians are trampled underfoot.

And while the KSA is setting liberal hearts a-flutter by allowing some women to drive, we'll not get too bothered about their overall track record on human rights, because, after all, they buy military stuff from US branch plants in Canada that employ Canadian workers.

And how lovely that we're gung-ho for gender equality in Ethiopia and beyond.

By the way, women in Canada are still a good distance away from achieving gender equality, but that's no reason not to champion ideals globally that we've not yet achieved here at home.


How about we address the beam in our own eye before we lecture the rest of the planet about the mote in theirs.

Cognitive dissonance and our "ironclad" support for Israel

The Freeland-Trudeau team like to go out of their way to pose as Trump-defying humanists, stalwarts of the international anti-Trump resistance. That's a pose meant primarily for the domestic audience, where pretend resistance scores a lot of political points among great swathes of the populace.

In the real world, we're 100% in with the Israel-KSA-USA axis of virtue. How else to explain our dithering over our biggest arms sale ever? How else to explain Chrystia's grovelling performance in Jerusalem last week?

The IDF turkey shoot at the Gaza fence continues week in and week out, with nary a peep from our dynamic duo of "feminist foreign policy," save for that one ill-advised slip of the tongue on Trudeau's part back in May, when he accidentally misspoke about the need for an impartial inquiry into the IDF's multiple murders of unarmed Palestinians. That brief outburst of sanity went missing immediately.

Maybe Kushner made a phone call.


No, we're proud to offer our "unwavering and ironclad support" for the Trump-loving Likudniks who are systematically destroying Israel and turning it into a loathsome apartheid pariah.

Likudnik Israel 2016 = Nazi Germany 1936?

It is of course much more than eighty years of linear time that separates Nazi Germany in '36 from Likud Israel today.

The Nazis were largely outside the club of nations. The Likudniks are cradled in the arms of the world's only superpower.

IDF big Yair Golan hit the motherlode of outrage the other day when he implied parallels between Germany in the thirties and Israel today.

General Golan joins a long list of former IDF/Mossad/Shin Bet luminaries who have stepped out to voice their heart-felt belief that the current administration is leading Israel down the road to ruin.

They're right. Maybe they're worth listening to...

When will Israel wake up?

Harper's Putin-bashing on the election trail was an epic fail

The so-called Ukraine crisis has pretty much been run off the front page by the ISIS crisis, but I'm sure you recall Putin's "annexation" of Crimea and his "invasion" of the Donbass region. The reason you remember is because Big Steve put a lot of electoral eggs in his anti-Putin basket, and our media never tired of retelling the same tired tale; we have to stand up to Putin's quest for world domination. Yup, Bad Vlad was trying to rebuild the Soviet Empire for sure...

Serious people understood all along that Harper's jingoistic rhetoric was aimed squarely at the Ukrainian Canadian vote in the upcoming election. Apparently the Conservative Party brain trust was convinced that third and fourth generation Ukrainian Canadians would reflexively vote Harper if the anti-Putin slanders were loud enough.

Alas, it was not to be. Not that the rhetoric wasn't loud enough, or that Harper's grand-standing (remember Australia?) wasn't silly enough; it was simply too silly. In the end, the Conservative showing in Ukrainian Canadian ridings shrivelled mightily.

The other so-called ethnic vote Harper was excessively pandering to was the "Jewish vote." That was probably something that went beyond mere electioneering considerations. If you look at the agenda of the Alliance Missionary Church types who were heavily over-represented among Harper's inner circle, it's not hard to see the "Christian Zionist" sub-text that permeates their ideology.

Nevertheless, there can be no question that the Harper gang was aiming for a sweep of the most populous Jewish ridings with their incessant pro-Likud rhetoric. How did that work out? Not so great. Three out of four went Liberal.

Why? Those "Christian Zionists" made the mistake of assuming that every Jewish Canadian automatically supports everything the government of Israel does. When the government of Israel is in the hands of a racist settler clique, there are many many Jewish Canadians who have grave reservations about giving unqualified and unquestioning support to the state of Israel.

Harper's politics of division went far beyond Ukrainian and Jewish Canadians of course. It was native against non-native, old-stock against immigrant, old immigrants against new immigrant... wherever the Harperites found a fissure to bang a wedge in, they went for it.

On the other hand, Trudeau built a campaign around inclusivity and tolerance, and Canadians bought in big-time.

Maybe there's hope for this country yet.

Fear and loathing and sheer imbecility at the Munk leader's debate

You gotta feel Peter Munk's pain. A couple of years ago he had the biggest gold mining company in the world. Now he's got the "Munk Debates."

Tonight's iteration of that over-reaching franchise is billed as the "Munk Leader's Debate," and features the three old boy leaders while ignoring the new girl, Green Party leader Elizabeth May.

Near as I can tell, the only winner in this "debate" was the unctuous moderator, "social entrepreneur" and careerist extraordinaire Rudyard Griffiths. He was obviously enjoying his most recent fifteen minutes of fame.

I have a hunch that a lot of tickets for this gig were sold via the Ukrainian-Canadian Council. How else to explain the undue prominence given that tired trope, "Putin's aggression?"

Before watching this I read the texts of both Obama's and Putin's speeches at the UNGA. Sure, Obama was obliged to toss in a few bromides about how it's unacceptable for big countries to run roughshod over small ones, but absolutely no one in the place takes that seriously.

Who runs over more small countries? The USA or Russia? And how many refugees are streaming out of Crimea?

The Israel-pandering was quite distasteful too. Apparently none of these charlatans can grasp the fact that it's possible to be "pro-Israel" while being vehemently anti-Netanyahu, anti-settlement, and anti-Likud. In fact, the long-term viability of Israel will depend on allies who are capable of doing just that.

Who won the debate?

Elizabeth May, simply by not disgracing herself by being a part of it.

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.

Netanyahu drops the "two state" mask

This should not come as a surprise to even the casual Netanyahu observer. Bibi's commitment to the two state solution was never anything other than a sop to his diaspora supporters who were desperate to portray him as a man looking for peace... if only there were a partner on the other side to negotiate with!

If even the toadying Abbas was not a viable partner, then it was plain all along that a viable partner could not possibly exist. Abbas has essentially served the function of being head kapo of the occupied territories. The fiction that he is somehow the "leader" of the Palestinians has allowed pro-Israel countries like Canada to call their support of Palestinian security services "foreign aid" to the Palestinians, when in reality it is a subsidy to the occupation.

The bona fide leadership of the Palestinians, the democratically elected Hamas party, were promptly shuffled onto the terror lists of Israel's most ardent foreign supporters, thereby allowing the US and Canada and a few others to endorse Israel's repeated genocidal wars on Gaza as a noble battle in the war on terror.

In this last day of electioneering, Hamas is once again a useful foil as Netanyahu waves the threat of "Hamastan" at the electorate.

"Elect me, because I am the only leader who can deal with the terrorists... all the others are leftist Arab-lovers..."

That is the pathetic sum total of Netanyahu's election platform. It's always served him well before, but this time around it looks like it might be selling better in New York and Montreal than in Tel Aviv and Haifa, where people are seeing through Netanyahu's endless fear-mongering and are more interested in a job and an affordable apartment.

A resounding Likud loss tomorrow, and a functional coalition of "leftist Arab-lovers," and there will be a glimmer of hope in the Holy Land for the first time in a generation.

World leaders converge on Paris in search of photo-ops

Charlie Hebdo is obviously much more loved in death than in life. In life, they were consistently harassed by the French state. In death, they are lionized by the French state.

And far beyond! These champions of freedom of expression have inspired a solidarity march in Paris tomorrow, that has virtually every leader in the free world clamouring to climb aboard the bandwagon!
Merkel, Cameron, Poroshenko... yes, ALL the leaders of the free world, and apparently every member of the Israeli Knesset to boot!

Thus far Canada has missed the boat on this one, designating Public Safety Minister Steve Blaney, a non-entity, to represent the country. But that was before news came out that all the top-echelon Likud crowd would be in attendance, which may yet cause a change of plans in Ottawa.

This is truly a heart-warming rally in support of freedom of speech!

But while our hearts are warm and our eyes are misty, let's not forget that as recently as last summer, the nation that now parades itself as the very womb of "freedom of expression," criminalized protest against Israel's invasion of Gaza.

Ah, but life is awash with ironies, is it not?

Saudi Arabia saves Ukraine from Putin - Conrad Black

That astonishing revelation comes from no less an armchair general than disgraced peer, convicted fraudster, and failed media magnate Conrad Black.

As Conrad sees it, Putin's order to have Russian troops pull back from the Ukraine border last week was not a goodwill gesture in the ongoing dialogue with Ukraine PM Poroshenko, but the result of pressure put on Russia by Saudi Arabia!

Conrad's musings in the National Post are a toxic stew of Islamophobia, Putin-bashing and wishful thinking.

• ISIS is fading and will be beaten by the Kurds
• Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel will join forces to liberate Iran
• more bombing will bring peace and democracy to Iraq and Syria
• Iran is the main cause of conflict in the region... and so on.

In fact, Mr. Black pretty much gives you the standard PNAC/Likud boilerplate in one condensed easy-to-read article... I didn't have to run for the dictionary once!

And that doesn't happen very often when I'm reading anything by CB.

Mr. Black, in spite of the many set-backs he has suffered over the past two decades, remains an entertaining spokesman for the smug and self-righteous Western elites. 

Too bad he gets so much so wrong!

Ten years ago, with oil under $50, western companies were pouring billions into the Russian oil fields because it was profitable for them to do so at that price. Now that the infrastructure is in place Russia isn't going to be crippled by a price of $70, but the fracking industry behind America's petrol-renaissance will be.

There goes America's so-called economic recovery. 

"Demented theocrats" in Tehran aren't the biggest obstacle to peace in the region; that would be the demented theocrats in Washington who truly believe, in their hearts, in America's God-given exceptionalism.

The Arab people have been mis-governed for the past 65 years because American power has propped up corrupt and repressive governments, and forced repeated wars on the region to affect regime change whenever the vassals strayed too far from their script.

Salad days for the warmongers

It's thumbs up and high fives all round as the big boys celebrate the state of weapon sales and current events.

Seldom has cynical warmongering achieved the momentum that we are witnessing today.

Commentators galore are castigating the Obama regime for "not doing enough" to help out the moderate Syrian rebels... to the point where Obama recently promised 500 millions in military aid to those imaginary "moderates".

That's another way of saying we're going to spend another half billion on weapons purchased from our most favoured domestic weapon suppliers, and turn them over to imaginary moderates, who will promptly turn them over to the very Jihadists we are supposedly fighting.

And that terrible awful Jihadi gang that we trained and financed and that then became the Islamic State, well, they're so evil now that we have to send the pretend government of Iraq, who we have also trained and financed, 4000 Hellfire missiles, which is of course a lovely cash injection for the Lockheed Martin war-profiteers, who are currently hemmoraging red ink over their signature war toy, the F-35.

Obviously, arming all sides in a conflagration we stirred up to begin with is a bonanza for arms suppliers. That's what happens when your foreign policy is dictated by Big Oil and the armaments industry.

Then we've got the Ukrainian mess. Luckily, that's turned into a shooting war, which can only help our beleaguered arms industry.

And let's not forget the most cynical warmongers of all, our Likud friends in Israel. Turns out the Netanyahu government knew all along that those three teen settlers were dead. They mounted that "bring back our boys" campaign knowing full well that those boys weren't coming back. But it was a great gambit for whipping up hate and fear, and by God, that can only be good for selling guns and bullets.

These are indeed the best of times for those who profit from the worst of times.

Canada FM Baird smears critics with "anti-semitism" slur

Ferry de Kerckhove had a long and distinguished career in Canada's Foreign Service, culminating in Egypt where he served as Canada's ambassador from 2009-2011. As such we might have some cause to assume he knows what he is talking about when he questions Canada's non-chalant handling of the Mohamed Fahmy file. Specifically, he had the temerity to suggest that Ottawa's lethargy may be related to the fact that our very best friends in Israel are quite enamoured of the al-Sisi regime, and neither Harper nor Baird are willing to go against the Likud party line.

To which the Foreign Minister replied with this appalling non-sequitur; "There are some people in this world who want to blame every single problem on Israel, the Jews... it's deeply offensive and ridiculous."

Fans of Israeli PM Netanyahu will recognize this strategy as coming straight out of the Likud playbook. When rational debate fails you, seize the moral high ground by calling your critics names. Not a particularly sophisticated strategy, but it works. 

Syria and the not-so-obvious

It is more than obvious that both Hezbollah and Israel have been knee-deep into the Syrian morass.

The official proclamations coming from Netanyahu et al have been pretty predicable. They're preventing advanced weaponry from falling into the hands of Hezbollah.

Of course they are.

But is it possible that both Israel and Hezbollah are in Syria propping up the same guy?

Both have plausible reasons for preserving the Assad regime. In fact, they both have much to lose if Syria devolves into a failed state on the lines of Iraq.

The Likud brain trust doesn't mind failed states per se; they've certainly done their best to ensure that Lebanon goes down that road. But it's important to them that the anarchy be manageable.

And Syria is out of control.

Middle East dystopias

Murtaza Hussain has a bleak vision of the Middle East on view at Al Jazeera today.

Hussain sees a series of fractured states, weak and vulnerable to foreign manipulation.

Iraq and Syria and Lebanon will disintegrate and in their wake will emerge sectarian statelets easily bullied and contained by the Nations of Virtue; ie NATO plus one.

Much of his thesis has been put forward on this site in the past.

But it will not end there. The state of Israel herself has at least as many internal contradictions as any of the Arab states in the neighborhood. Long the "only democracy in the Middle East," that claim to virtue fades by the day, and even the myth of it is largely sustained by the bottomless well of American subsidy.

That well cannot and will not remain bottomless forever, at which time there will be a reckoning.

The Washington-Tel Aviv-Riyadh "axis of control" of which Hussain writes is doomed to failure, and it will fail independently in each of those capitals.

Riyadh is the weakest link. The House of Saud enjoys more popular support in Israel than it does in Saudi Arabia. That fact may make for feel-good headlines in certain corners of the media, but it is not a situation that is sustainable.

The House of Saud is bearing down on it's best-before date faster than those thousands of Princes can possibly imagine, and its collapse will also mean the end of the blank check for fundamentalist mischief-makers throughout the Islamic world.

Israel may survive the next round with Hezbollah, but survival is the best to be hoped for. Her status as the neighborhood bully will be radically eclipsed. The Likud agenda in Israel has managed to maintain an element of popular support because so far every victory has been relatively easy. Once that reality changes, so will popular support for the belligerent "Greater Israel" crowd and the settlement project.

America is the wild card.

America boasts a failing education system, a failing health care system, crumbling infrastructure, runaway unemployment, an unprecedented level of debt, and by far the largest military budget in the history of military budgets.

Does any serious person imagine that such a state of affairs can continue indefinitely?

US delivers tanks and F-16 fighters to Muslim Brotherhood

In the final act of a deal made with the Mubarak regime, the Obama administration intends to follow through on a deal to deliver 10 F-16s and 200 Abrams battle tanks to the now Islamic Republic of Egypt.

And why not? It's part of the regional quid pro quo. American tax-payers gift a couple of billion dollars worth of stuff to Israel, and the Egyptians get a couple hundred millions worth of stuff just so they'll cut out the pouting. Oh, and stand by that "peace agreement" they "voluntarily" entered into all those years ago.

Nevermind that Mubarak is long gone and the country is in the hands of what may or may not be Muslim fanatics. A deal is a deal! Free stuff is free stuff! Did the US renege on giving free stuff to Israel just because a bunch of Likud fanatics took over the country?

What could go wrong?

Nations of Virtue threaten to shorten Netanyahu's leash

In a radical departure from standard procedure over the past half century, the governments of France and Britain seem on the verge of letting the settler-lobby in Israel know that enough is enough.

"Settler-lobby" is of course synonymous with Likud, and Netanyahu's announcement of 3,000 new settler abodes in East Jerusalem the day after the historic UN vote was apparently a bridge too far for them.

The churlish announcement today that Israel will withhold tax revenue from the PA is just, well, really childish and really stupid, and will just further isolate Israel.

And as welcome as the Haaretz headline is, it really doesn't mean a thing so long as the US is prepared to continue its blank check/no-questions-asked approach.

Given the immediate condemnation of the housing announcement by the Obama administration, maybe Bibi shouldn't be counting on that.

But at least he still has Canada in his corner!

Richard Falk and the New World Order

On the face of it you might expect to find a little truth behind the claims that Richard Falk is an emissary for the New World Order.

After all, he has aligned himself with such ominous sounding entities as the "World Federalist Institute" and the "American Movement for World Government."

And he is a Jew after all. While I don't spend a lot of time studying the various threads of NWO conspiracy theories I am sufficiently acquainted with their overall thrust to appreciate that the chosen people play a central role.

I am also sufficiently acquainted with the work of Richard Falk to know that he is one of those Jews that the Likud crowd love to hate the most.

He is the classic "self-hating" Jew, which of course is the fate of every Jew who disagrees with the Likudniks.

He has, in their view, violated the sacred trust between God and the chosen people by suggesting that Palestinians have rights too, a view that is utterly blasphemous among the crowd of annex-everything fascists who seem determined to drive the state of Israel into the abyss.

Just recently two of the towering geniuses in the Harper cabinet have piled onto the anti-Falk bandwagon, namely Messers Baird and Kenney. They have taken umbrage over statements made by Falk about western corporations that profit from the occupation.

Why these dolts remain in the Harper cabinet is a good question, and I think the answer is that the Prime Minister likes to keep a few buffoons around because they inevitably make him look a whole lot smarter by comparison.

While I am somewhat ambivalent about Falk's position vis-a-vis those companies, I am totally in agreement that pressure needs to be brought to bear on those who profit from the occupation. What that pressure should look like is not for me to judge, but any analysis of the situation must proceed from the fact that the occupation is illegal and immoral, which by the way is the official position of the Canadian government.

Which brings us back to the New World Order.

It seems this has become a catch-all category for a wide range of folks disaffected with the current state of things. Everything from the out-sourcing of the industrial economy to gay marriage is at some point tied into this imaginary NWO.

NWO conspiracy theories thrive in those societies wherein the working classes have suffered a roll-back in their standard of living over the past few generations. Those would be primarily the folks who took it on the chin when the Reagan-Thatcher revolution cemented neo-liberalism as the state religion in the Anglo American universe.

For over forty years we have watched ourselves get poorer while our oligarchs and plutocrats got richer, and rather than hold the oligarchs and plutocrats and the politicians they've bought responsible, we want to blame Jews or Bilderbergers or aliens or Freemasons for the problem.

Which of course is just fine with our masters.

Falling Downs crippled by CIA cyber terror attack!

Holy jumpin' catfish, we were off the net for days!

And I think I know who is behind this.

Mossad!

Yup, the Likud party bosses gave the orders to shut down this aggravating purveyor of anti-Likud truth that is read by at least three or four Israelis every month...

Oh all right then... Maybe not.

The CIA!

Yes, the CIA is behind the cyber attack! And we have proof! The proof is that we have no proof! That is how they operate on the dark side. When there is no evidence whatsoever, it was obviously the CIA!

That is just one of the known knowns in the world 'o spooks. When every other plausible explanation defies comprehension, it was obviously the CIA...

Wait a minute... it could have been CSIS, Canada's own wannabee CIA!...

Nah...

They pretty much stick to sending Arab Canadians to Libya and Syria for "interrogation", and now that the Nations of Virtue have put paid, or almost paid to the evil dictators who run those countries, that's pretty much out.

Oh, wait a minute... the repair dude is here... what's that? The modem?...

Seems the connector plugging into the modem had a broken wire...

Nevermind then.

Israel's war mongers elected with overseas campaign money

Haaretz has a thought provoking story at their site today. Writer Chaim Levinson makes the case that the vast majority of campaign financing for Likud and their main coalition partners comes from the diaspora.

Netanyahu himself gets over 96% of his campaign donations from abroad.

Virtually all modern democratic states have strict limits about how much foreign money can be contributed to an election campaign. Not Israel.

When you think about it, it makes sense that the War Party would be financed from afar. Jews in Montreal and New York City don't have the same kind of immediate interest in peace with the neighbors as those who live in Haifa or Tel Aviv.

Maybe it's time to tighten up the campaign finance laws.