America and the Middle East

[stui magpie]

[LaurieHolden]

[Magpietothemax]

Israel has just massacred over 100 starving Palestinian people waiting in line to get flour.
Biden cries crocodile tears, deploring all the violence, omitting to mention that the bullets used by the IDF were made in the US and paid for by the US.

[David]

I read about that yesterday – pretty atrocious. Starving people got caught up in a crowd crush at an aid truck and IDF soldiers apparently indiscriminately opened fire. Dahlia Scheindlin in Haaretz offered the best response to anyone who tries to spin this as justifiable or blame the victims:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/haaretz-today/2024-02-29/ty-article/.highlight/30-000-dead-a-stampede-of-the-starving-hostages-dying-the-war-in-gaza-has-to-end/0000018d-f621-d72b-a18d-f7f12cd10000

[What'sinaname]

[think positive]

Not that different, the corpse might look different but dead is dead.

Israel lost the last of my sympathies about 20,000 kids ago.

The war didn’t kill them, this was out and out murder 1.

Genocide.

[Magpietothemax]

[stui magpie]

https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/despot-radical-peacemaker-the-millennial-prince-and-the-middle-east-moonshot-20230111-p5cbua.html

Really interesting article about Saudi Arabia, it's internal politics, ambitions, role in the middle East and relationship with the USA.

[pietillidie]

^Nice find. It's rare to get a decent-length piece like that in a mainstream rag. I don't trust him as far as I could throw him, but even so it's all about how he compares to the alternatives. He's certainly read the tea leaves on his oil economy. The problem is, because that was fake, non-competitive income, the country hasn't walked through the normal reform steps as, say, Japan and South Korea have, as they moved from manufacturing to services. So, you'll have this country with its tentacles everywhere sans the modern culture and institutions, which is menacing (see China).

At the same time, as I say, there are even worse fruitcakes. Still hard to judge on that relative big-picture basis (though much easier if you're a Yemeni child, of course.

[pietillidie]

^Just saw in the NYT they're putting big money into AI: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/19/business/saudi-arabia-investment-artificial-intelligence.html

[Magpietothemax]

US resolution in the UN, cynically presented as a "ceasefire resolution"" vetoed by China and Russia, and also opposed by Algeria.
T
The US resolution was a duplicitous and murderous charade, which aimed only to legitimise the conditions for an Israeli military onslaught against Gaza.
It was formulated as an attempted smokescreen to cover up the Biden administration's total complicity in the genocide in gáza. Biden is getting desperate because his "no red lines" endorsement of Israel;'s genocide is resulting in his plunging popularity.

The Algerian representaive to the UN,Amar Bendjama, explained:
“It is a laissez-passer to continuing killing of Palestinian civilians. The emphasis on measures to reduce civilian harm from ongoing and future operations implies a license for continuing bloodshed.”
The supposed "ceasefire" resolution sponsored by the US was only for 6 weeks, giving time for Israel to pretend to evacuate civilians from Rafah and legitimise another slaiughter.
In the meantime, the ongoing Israeli bombardments and blockade is ensuring that famine and disease will become a cause of death even greater than military bombardments and drone attacks.