In the last few days Israel has assassinated leaders in multiple neighboring nations, assassinated multiple journalists, deliberately destroyed a water facility in Gaza during a polio outbreak, and had riots defending the right of IDF soldiers to rape Palestinian prisoners. Clearly the sort of country we should all want to send our sons and daughters to go fight and die for.
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Western officials are always babbling about Israel’s “right to defend itself”, which sparks all kinds of debates about whether an occupying force does in fact have a right to defend itself under international law. What these debates overlook is the fact that Israel ISN’T “defending itself”. It’s pure offense. Pure attack. Israel is always the aggressor.
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Israel is never “defending itself”, and the US is never “defending Israel”. Both of these nations exist in a constant state of attack and aggression, which is then framed as “defending” by propaganda spin.
The US sows violence and division in the middle east as a matter of policy. Israel’s very creation was an act of aggression upon the people this apartheid ethnostate was dropped on top of, and it has been the aggressor ever since. Other nations and groups in the middle east have been defending themselves against those aggressions. They are the only parties in all this who can claim to be “defending” anything.
Even measures which appear inherently defensive in nature like the “Iron Dome” and the missile and drone interceptions we saw this past April during Iran’s retaliatory strikes are not defensive the way Israel and the US use them, because they are used to protect Israel from the defensive measures of the people Israel is attacking. A Kevlar vest ceases to be a defensive measure when you use it to keep from being stopped by police while conducting a mass shooting. A shield stops being a tool of defense when you’re using it to make sure you can stab someone with your sword. They’re just measures taken to facilitate more Israeli aggression by removing the deterrence and defense capabilities of the people it’s attacking.
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Senator Marco Rubio has introduced a bill to “counter adversarial financial systems,” because “China, Russia, and Iran use alternate financial systems to evade U.S. sanctions.”
“Sanction enforcement is vital to enforcing our laws,” writes Rubio.
“Enforcing our laws.” These Washington swamp monsters really, truly believe they own the planet.
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Meanwhile Senator Lindsey Graham has introduced legislation authorizing US military force against Iran.
People say Lindsey Graham is gay, but he isn’t gay. I don’t know if there’s a word for the sexual orientation where you can only become aroused by mass military violence, but it’s not gay.
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The US is just casually attacking the military forces of Iraq in defiance of the will of the Iraqi government, yet US officials talk about Iraq like it’s a sovereign nation and an equal and respected “security partner”, and not an occupied country subject to the rule of Washington.
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People who tell you “Talk to Venezuelans!” to justify their support for US regime change operations are suffering from at least four delusions:
1. That all Venezuelans hate their government.
2. That everyone in ANY country universally hates their government.
3. That pointing out the existence of Venezuelans who dislike Maduro is some kind of interesting or insightful point.
4. That US regime change interventionism is ever good or helpful or based on truth.
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There’s a song “Expert In A Dying Field” by a band out of Aukland called The Beths, and every time I hear it I find myself thinking “God I hope that’s me someday.” I hope someday to live in a world where all this information and insight I’ve gathered about imperialism, tyranny and abuse is obsolete.
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I long to be an expert in a dying field. Where nobody needs to know what lies are being marketed in Washington or who’s killing who in the middle east, because none of that’s happening anymore and everyone’s just getting along and being happy. Where the finer points of imperial propaganda manipulation are no longer relevant to the world we live in, because there is no imperial propaganda machine, and there is no empire. Where any information about what wars we’ve been deceived into is rapidly becoming as trivial as information about wars fought by long-dead empires in ancient history. Where there’s no longer an urgent need to awaken from our propaganda-induced coma and overthrow the power structures which are killing our biosphere and threatening all terrestrial life with nuclear brinkmanship, because the great uprising has already occurred.
Ultimately that’s all those of us who’ve thrown ourselves into this fight are really going for: our own total obsolescence and irrelevance. To one day have all this knowledge we’ve gathered be obscure trivia and all this work we’ve done be forgotten, because we live in a healthy and harmonious world that no longer has any use for it. And then we can throw ourselves into art and beauty and discovery and love, and into the project of collaborating toward the further good of all creatures with everybody else, in a society that is at long last at peace with itself.
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If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
