Category Archives: Political Philosophy

NEW ESSAY: ISRAEL: In Violation Of God’s Law, Natural Justice, The Laws Of War & All Customary International Humanitarian Law

America, Crime, Europe, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War, Law, Media, Morality, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Propaganda, UN, War

Over and above industrial-scale mass murder of individual people—Israel is engaged in the eradication of Gazans as a People ~ilana

NEW ESSAY in its totality is on The Unz Review: “Israel: In Violation Of God’s Law, Natural Justice, The Laws Of War & All Customary International Humanitarian Law.”

AND serialized on the Mises Institute’s Power & Market:

The State of Israel Abandons Law and Morality in Its War on Gaza,” Part I, April 2
“The US Vetoes International Action on Gaza,” Part II, April 3
Why Genocide?: Every Law of War Has Been Violated in Gaza,” Part III, April 4
Gaza: What If America Were the Good Guy?” Part IV, April 5

The title is self-explanatory. In this new essay I comprehensively show Israel to be In violation of all laws of war and much of Customary International Humanitarian Law. God’s Law and
Natural Justice are close corollaries.

I go through the US ceasefire farce and lies—the ceasefire is BINDING!–I exposit the laws of war all violated, and expound on at least four laws that make up the genocide standard, flouted by Israel. Rafah appears to be a Final Solution of sorts.

I visualize what a Super Power could and should do. The visual of the essay’s coda is that of a patriot. Alas, and sadly, there is not much to be patriotic about.

Please share, for truth-tellers on Israel’s war of annihilation against Gaza’s Palestinians are being banned and excommunicated.  Go figure: WE CANNOT BE BOUGHT OR SILENCED.

Short excerpt:

 AMERICA’S CEASEFIRE DECEPTION

 America has conditioned the inalienable right to life of Palestinians on the return of Israeli hostages, in effect nullifying that right ~ilana

For throwing-up clouds of obfuscating sepia over its abstention vote on  the United Nations Security Council’s ceasefire resolution, March 25, the Biden Administration and its UN representative must be exposed.

“Ceasefire” in previous U.S. drafts amounted to Orwellian News Speak. Having never once called for an immediate, unconditional ceasefire, the U.S. had perfunctorily predicated temporary ceasefire resolutions on the return of Israeli hostages.

Whereas it was obligated morally to compel Israel to forthwith cease and desist its systematic and sustained onslaught on Gaza’s civilians; the US had opted, until March 25, to merely condition the temporary cessation of immoral and illegal mass murder of innocent Palestinians on the release of Israeli hostages, in effect tethering a “ceasefire” to the return of the Israeli hostages.

Against the wishes of citizens of our country and the world, America has deployed its veto power, repeatedly and reliably, in previous United Nations Security Council votes, so as to prevent an immediate, unconditional cease-fire in Gaza.

By so doing, America had conditioned the inalienable right to life of Palestinians on the return of Israeli hostages, in effect nullifying that inalienable right.

Recognizing that the right to life of innocent men, women and children is unconditional; Security Council member states, aside the United States and its protégé Israel, had refused to tether the fate of Gaza to hostage negotiations.

With pellucid logic, Amar Bendjama, Algeria’s ambassador to the U.N and the Arab bloc’s current Security Council member, had stated, February 20, 2024, that, “A vote in favor of [an unconditional ceasefire] is a support to the Palestinians’ right to life.” With its prior vetoes and current abstention, the US had nullified Palestinian right to life independent of the rights of Israeli hostages to the same.

You can say that Gaza’s innocent civilians are being held hostage by Israel enablers Blinken, Biden and Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

The general run of people around the world, however, are having none of this. We have been chanting “ceasefire” with catechetical promptness. The West’s “smart” set is belatedly getting the message that their constituents, decent citizens, are revolted by Israel’s acts and are in-revolt against supporting it.

In response, and oh-so cynically, all Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield did on March 25 was to abstain from using American veto power to stop the good guys—China, Russia, Algeria and the rest of the 15-member UN Security Council—from demanding an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza. That’s all.

Expect the Biden Administration and its bi-partisan backers to keep gently cajoling brief lulls—conditional breaks—in the IDF’s bloodletting of a helpless, cornered civilian population.

Covering its wretchedness with sanctimony; the US had not vetoed the last ceasefire resolution; but had, nevertheless, worked to water it down. In its abstention vote, the US has “blocked action in the General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace resolution, where you could have seen some real meaningful action.”

For moral compass scrambled; it’s hard to beat former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley. In this protracted foreign-policy mirage, Blinken, Biden, Thomas-Greenfield and their political posse do Nikki Haley, a Republican, proud, for Trump’s appointee to the UN would have done nothing different.

CEASE AND DESIST! WHERE’S THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT?

A violent offender, a serial killer, must be stopped; not cautioned and observed! ~ilana

IDF soldiers vaporize young men picking their way through rubble as though in a video game; they mock their victims, invade their homes; filch from their businesses, and rummage through the piteous intimate effects of people dead and dispossessed ~ilana

In the world of patronage, it doesn’t get much worse. The United States is at Israel’s elbow—it is a cobelligerent: In actively sustaining Israel’s armed forces, and running diplomatic interference for its politicians; America is acting as Israel’s “principal sponsor,” complicit in war crimes, signaling  to the Jewish State that it will let it continue to its evil endgame.

As I ventured in January, the issuance of the equivalent of a legal cease-and-desist or a restraining order against a violent offender, Israel, is urgent and long overdue. It’s already too late for Gaza as a habitable landmass.

While progressives lauded the International Court of Justice (ICJ), my perspective about the Court’s indecision, some months back, was dimmer. (Disgust, actually.) Unfocused as I was on legalistic definitions of genocide; it was obvious to me that, what was indubitably mass murder and ethnic cleansing—crimes that are in process and ongoing—had to be stopped right away. A violent offender, a serial killer, must be stopped; not cautioned and observed!

Were the International Court of Justice an effective and just organization it would have issued some sort of binding cease and desist order, some manner of restraining order, if you will, instructing the Israel Defense Forces, the Devil’s emissaries on earth, to stop its depredations.

Another international tribunal, the International Criminal Court (ICC), had “issued, in March of 2023, warrants of arrest, no less “for two individuals in the context of the situation in Ukraine,” one of whom was Mr. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, president of the Russian Federation, who was being sought for war crimes.

With respect to Israel, the inept International Court of Justice appears compromised.

For in a just society, the moral strictures that apply to the individual must also extend to the collective. Immoral acts that are forbidden severally cannot be sanctioned collectively. If the citizen must not murder; neither should The State, any state.

UN SECURITY COUNCIL CEASEFIRE IS BINDING

A Security Council resolution not defanged by the US could have included a call for diplomatic, military, political, and economic sanctions, the freezing of Israeli assets, the deployment of a protection force, and the establishment of a tribunal for future prosecution ~ilana

In its uncontested superiority, the United States has asserted, moreover, that the UN ceasefire resolution is “non-binding.” “Completely false,” fumes international law expert Graig Mokhiber, in an interview, March 26, with Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now!” And I paraphrase Mr. Mokhiber:

It is black-letter law in the U.N. Charter that all members of the United Nations are bound to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council. The Charter, in Article 25, and in subsequent decisions of the International Court of Justice, has made it indisputable that Security Council resolutions are binding for all member states.

Not only is the last ceasefire resolution binding, but it opens up an opportunity, given that Israel is in breach of it, to table a resolution for enforcement under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which “empowers the Security Council to orchestrate … collective actions … through a Military Staff Committee.”

A Security Council resolution not defanged by the United States could include a call for corporeal action: diplomatic, military, political, and economic sanctions, the freezing of Israeli assets, the deployment of a protection force, and the establishment of a tribunal for future prosecution. …

... READ THE COMPLETE ESSAY:  “Israel: In Violation Of God’s Law, Natural Justice, The Laws Of War & All Customary International Humanitarian Law.”

NEW BOOK: UPDATE II (3/13): The Paleolibertarian Guide To Deep Tech, Deep Pharma & The Aberrant Economy

Argument, Business, Capitalism, Classical Liberalism, Economy, Ethics, Free Markets, Free Speech, Government, Healthcare, libertarianism, Liberty, Logic, Morality, Natural Law, Outsourcing, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Pseudoscience, Reason, Regulation, Republicans, Science, Technology, The State

State ideology and the corporate creed have converged. Between them, they suborn the individual in one way or another ~ilana

Between the State and the Corporation, Homo sapiens has been reduced to a Hobbesian, hedonistic version of homo economicus and a sad iteration of homo solitarius ~ilana

The Paleolibertarian Guide To Deep Tech, Deep Pharma & The Aberrant Economy is the first in a series of volumes, to form part of “The Paleolibertarian Guide” (TPG) compendium.

“DEEP TECH,” my preferred term for the high-tech sector, denotes how deeply the head honchos of high-tech have penetrated and poisoned the American public and private sectors. As a coinage, Deep Tech is superior to Big Tech. Drawn from the term “Deep State,” the term “Deep Tech” better captures Big Tech’s overarching, enervating and tentacular reach into state and civil society.

“Deep State,” of course, is no conspiracy. Before the Left turned the term against the Right; it had long since been deployed on the Left and by libertarians to denote the state within a state, operating, for the most, extra-constitutionally. To all intents and purposes, Deep Tech has become almost as powerful as the State in molding the Little Guy into a right-thinking Global Citizen.

In The Paleolibertarian Guide To Deep Tech, Deep Pharma & The Aberrant Economy, I make the case that state ideology and the corporate creed have converged. Between them, they suborn the individual in one way or another. The State no longer merely silhouettes civil and commercial society; but is absorbing it. What’s more, corporate culture, my purview in this volume, has been thoroughly co-opted by the State. Willingly so.

It has become the reflexive habit of corporations, not necessarily malevolently, to work together as well as to collude with government, to snuff out all lineaments of subversion in labor. After all, the progressive ideology is a gospel which these industry leaders never cease to proclaim and act upon. And if you fail to conform to it; they’ll fire you, isolate you, expose you, silence you, cancel you for good. These observations apply across party-lines.

“THE ABERRANT ECONOMY” in this work denotes the attitude of the multinationals toward economic growth. This attitude is today rooted not in healthy, community-based practices stateside and abroad, but in some aberrant economic gigantism. The derogatory diagnosis of economic elephantiasis undergirded by hubris, greed, and devout woke religiosity is warranted, I believe. Acromegaly is a physical deformity. In the human body it is caused by overproduction of certain compounds and is characterized by aberrant enlargement of the structure under discussion.

A diagnosis of economic acromegalia in Deep Tech is warranted ~ilana

The economic acromegalia or giantism diagnosed here in Deep Tech is one that manages to trample individual rights and other elementary decencies. Let us thus not confuse the metastatic multinational, motivated mostly by stratospheric wealth and a woke worldview—itself a gutter-like philosophy—with a business propelled by the good old-fashioned profit motive, whose growth is sustained by individuals and families tethered to corporeal communities, as opposed to colonies of imported laborers. Individuals, families, living in authentic, organic communities: These misty attachments are anathema to, and enemy of, the multinational’s clubby elites.

I underscore, as if in red ink, and deconstruct in detail how the awfulness of the COVID years, in particular, was underwritten by giant government, Big Pharma, and its latest malignant offshoot, the COVID Cartel—Disease X ad infinitum, if you will—in informal cahoots with social media. Again, a state within a state, operating, for the most, extra-constitutionally.

Just how control is achieved—more reflexively than conspiratorially—I demonstrate by taking the reader through the COVID years, when “Agency And State Capture” were consolidated. I show how and why the Grand Old Party, Republicans, will always be missing in action on matters of individual and constitutional rights. On all matters, actually:

The overtone window alludes to a range of ideas once considered unthinkable, but now normalized. With their flaccid, crushingly stupid responses to most situations—Republicans have helped to normalize tyranny ~ilana

And I touch on the deformed foundations of the American Third-Party run healthcare system, down to how Deep Pharma’s patent privileges subvert market-based profits and free market medicine. Fault Deep Pharma, I counsel, not China.

In fact, not mere jobs, but “the very stuff of life is outsourced” by High-Tech, which loathes a labor market. (Chapter 7.) After reading “Homeless In The Homeland” (Chapter 6), the most heartbreaking of the book’s chapters, the reader will understand not only how “High-Tech Compounds Homelessness,” but that “homelessness in the United States is both physical and metaphysical”:

When your home belongs to The World; it’s everybody’s home, and nobody’s home, not even yours, which means you could find yourself homeless ~ilana

Ultimately, the sundering of cherished natural and constitutional rights by entities whose market penetration and capitalization equal those of many countries combined is why a solution is urgent.

Free-traders such as myself contend that it is worse than corrosive for big, powerful business to usher in a mind-controlling creed which they enforce against the Little Guy—on pain of social and financial demise—so that his speech is confined to politically correct, do-or-die guiding lodestars, the kind that sap and leach away the individual’s native power. Such an immoral drive ought to have miscarried a long time ago. A solution is provided in Chapter 9, “Dispatching Deep Tech; Enforcing Natural Rights.”

In the “Epilogue: On Globalism & Giving,” I round up by juxtaposing global integration with regionalism and localism, and spotlighting the last inspirational capitalist heroes of international standing. I hope to leave the readers with thoughts about charity, grace and what distinguishes The Good Giver from the Showy Giver.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK

Analytical thinking precedes empiricism and is at the root of solid thought as well as good science ~ilana

The Paleolibertarian Guide To Deep Tech, Deep Pharma & The Aberrant Economy, as mentioned, is the first in a series of volumes, to form part of The Paleolibertarian Guide (TPG) compendium. The TPG’s polemical impetus is analytical in nature. The framework of this and future works in the series will systematically demonstrate that analytical thinking precedes empiricism and is at the root of solid thought as well as good science—and liberty itself.

To wit, certain propositions in life need no “empirical evidence” for their validation. If anything, the constant insistence on scientism is in itself evidence of a deep corruption of reason. While solid empirical data are never to be dismissed, these are supplemental to a solid philosophy of science.

Derived from the Aristotelian method, the method I follow, Austrian-School thinking, is based in the laws of reason. To the extent that research contradicts reason, to that extent research is rubbish. The idea that science without the philosophy of science is nonsense comes alive for readers in Chapter 2: “COVID’s Cartel Of Cretins,” where, vivid and fun examples of a priori truths are provided.

THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON of this volume and those to follow is how to repatriate thinking outsourced to the expert class. For, these days, the simplest of logical deductions often appear to evade the ordinary man or woman.

The cognitive class, a managerial malignancy now glommed onto the Managerial State, will often cloak itself in the raiment of “science” and is instrumental in generating consensus. The insidious Expert Class that shapes and manages perceptions about public affairs I see as an extension of James Burnham’s Managerial State.

New Yorker James Burnham (1905-1987) began his intellectual odyssey as a Trotskyist before abjuring Marxism altogether and becoming a passionate anticommunist. He coined the phrase “managerial revolution,” which was extremely influential in the 1940s, and which served as the title of his bestselling book, one that had a marked impact on Orwell’s philosophy.

Lilliputian Man now finds himself pinned down like a butterfly, incapable or unwilling to derive and arrive at the truth without outsourcing his thinking to some authority or another. Restore we must the ancient philosophical notion whereby some things are simply axiomatically true (or false, for that matter), for it has profound ramifications for liberty.

A free-thinking people does not outsource thinking—the very business of life—to anyone.

 

 

UPDATE (2/25/024): Who knows what this means? Still, a nice category in which to be No. 1, in New Releases however fleetingly: Ethics & Morality.

UPDATE II (3/13/024): I’m buoyed to report that today, March 3, The Paleolibertarian Guide To Deep Tech, Deep Pharma & The Aberrant Economy is No. 31 in the category of “Best Sellers in Philosophy Criticism.”

NEW PODCAST (1/25): Hermetically Sealed Indictment Of The Jewish Taliban’s Mass Murder In Gaza

America, Anti-Semitism, Argument, Criminal Injustice, Ethics, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Free Speech, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Judaism & Jews, Just War, Justice, Middle East, Military, Morality, Natural Law, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Reason, South-Africa

If you know in advance that your actions will cause the deaths of thousands-upon-thousands of civilians; attached to your criminal actions (actus reus) is a guilty mind (mens rea), which means malice aforethought, also known as intent, in Western jurisprudence and judicial philosophy. ~ilana

IN THE HARD TRUTH podcast, “Hermetically Sealed Indictment Of The Jewish Taliban’s Mass Murder In Gaza,” David Vance and myself hammer-out the truth together about Gaza, which is, in my opinion, not a hard thing.

Drawing on the essay, “Memory & Indictment: Today’s Jewish Taliban Not The Israel I Grew Up In,” I say that it is inarguable:

The case against Israel’s murder spree in Gaza is ethically simple, and not within the realm of opinion. It is immutable, eternal truth that, right and wrong are universal, not relative. There are no special tribal privilege clauses. Thus, like gentiles, Jews are prohibited from mass murder. The Sixth Commandment (“Thou shalt not murder”) is neither opinion, nor is it optional.

Memory & Indictment: Today’s Jewish Taliban Not The Israel I Grew Up In,” IS A WIDE-RANGING ESSAY, an intellectual and spiritual purge of sorts. It spans, by necessity, past and present, the personal and the political, the philosophical and the factual.

It “hermetically seals the indictment of the Jewish Taliban’s mass murder in Gaza.”

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2024/01/memory-indictment-todays-jewish-taliban-not-israel-grew/

Published by The New American, The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, and The Mises Institute, Power & Market—the essay is a First Principles deconstruction of Israel’s orgiastic murder spree in Gaza opinion.

It is thus, I propose, not opinion, but truth.

For, like the laws of logic, right and wrong are universal, not relative. There are no special tribal privilege clauses—Jews, like gentiles, are prohibited from mass murder. “Thou shalt not murder” (you can “kill,” but you cannot murder—read about the Biblical difference in the essay) is neither opinion, nor is it optional. That’s why the Sixth Commandment is called a … commandment. Immutable natural law is truth, not opinion.

What Israel has visited on Gazans and their little enclave is irreparable, orgiastic mass murder and ethnic cleansing; a blitzkrieg wherein the civilian population has been bombed, buried—dead and alive—then evicted for life.

Eviction is in accordance with an Israeli government policy plan, cited in my essay, but, alas, omitted, I believe, from the South African brief to the International Court Of Justice. I read the Jewish State’s population-eviction document in Hebrew, in English, and in incredulity.

The essay was variously titled elsewhere as follows: “Jewish Supremacism, Like American Exceptionalism, Breeds Barbarism,” “Israel’s Hamas Made Me Do It Claim Doesn’t Excuse Tel-Aviv’s Barbarism,” and an “Hermetically Sealed Indictment Of The Jewish Taliban’s Mass Murder And Ethnic Cleansing In Gaza.”

It “hermetically seals,” the case against the prosecutors and defenders of a war, “70 percent of whose casualties are women and children.” After following the contours of argument and facts, herein, not a sentient soul can say that the war on Gazans qualifies as a just war. It doesn’t even remotely abide by Saint Augustine’s “Just War Theory,” which, while imperfect, is also closer to truth than opinion. Gazans are owed reparations in perpetuity for that which is irreparable.

Brief excerpt: https://www.ilanamercer.com/2024/01/memory-indictment-todays-jewish-taliban-not-israel-grew/

“…. In truth, Israel owns the killing field that is Gaza, circa 2023/2024. The offensive it has waged on Gaza is as close to Total Warfare (a term reserved for war against any and all), as modern war has gotten.

And war against civilians is war on civilization.

Yet, all Israel has to do to make world leaders turn tail is intone psychopathically that ‘Hamas made me do it. Hamas ate my homework; I mean my conscience.’

The ‘Hamas made me murder 25,700 souls (at least) and displace two million men, women and children’ excuse-making ‘argument’ will not wash as an argument for mass murder. For one, he who offends against innocents is responsible for his offenses; not a third party. For another, …whether it is committed by decree of the one or by the will of the many; by actors within or without The State; by the designated ‘good guys’ or by the ‘bad guys’—murder of innocents is still murder. Murder by ‘democratic’ approval is also still murder, however many approve of it.

Besides, mass murder is never ‘unintentional’ when you know it is inevitable and incidental to your ‘mission.’

Annoying as they are, neither do the pitiful caches of arms, ostensibly located in hospitals, begin to justify the grotesquely disproportionate sallies against Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital and all other hospitals, murdering patients and refugees. A hospital should never be demolished. Instead, demolish we must the demented ‘argument’ that claims for Israel a right to drop dumb bombs on Gaza’s doctors and patients. The former, apparently, are expected not only to palliate their imperiled patients, but also account for Hamas’ whereabouts.”….

What Israel has visited on Gazans and their little enclave is irreparable, orgiastic mass murder and ethnic cleansing; a barbaric blitzkrieg whereby the civilian population has been bombed, buried dead and alive, then evicted for life.

David pushes back by saying that Hamas are a terror group that should be wiped off the face of the earth. But he also emphasizes that collective punishment is always wrong. David does agree that Israel has a right to self defense but it has to be carried out with concern for the civilian Gazan population.

We appreciate a Follow at Hard Truth.

RELATED READING:

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2024/01/memory-indictment-todays-jewish-taliban-not-israel-grew/

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/12/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/11/bibi-netanyahu-may-find-dock-hague/

UPDATED (11/14): NEW COLUMN: Bibi Obliterates Memory Of Oct. 7 Martyrs; Creates New Martyrs In Gaza

Argument, Conservatism, Crime, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War, Morality, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Terrorism, War

Murder with majority approval is still murder, whomever the perpetrator. Whether it is committed by actors within or without The State; by the designated ‘good guys’ or by the ‘bad guys’; murder of innocents is still murder ~ilana

The razing of Gaza by Benjmain Netanyahu, abetted by Joe Biden and his Uniparty accomplices, in the course of which civilians are dying: This is murder with malice aforethought, a concept that includes ‘deaths resulting from actions that display a depraved indifference to life! ~ilana

UPDATED (11/9): STOP. WAKE THE FUCK UP. SAVE YOUR SOULS.  The razing of Gaza and the ongoing murder and displacement of thousands of innocent civilians by the Israel Defense Forces, with US imprimatur—these are war crimes, mass murder, ethnic cleansing, sheer evil.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/11/bibi-obliterates-memory-october-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-gaza/

NEW COLUMN ISBibi Obliterates Memory Of Oct. 7 Martyrs; Creates New Martyrs In Gaza.” So far, three exceedingly courageous publications have published it: my home at The New American.

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/november/03/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

And, The Mises Institute (“Bibi Netanyahu May Find Himself In the Dock, In The Hague.”)

https://mises.org/power-market/bibi-netanyahu-may-find-himself-dock-hague

Note that this is a column penned by a systematic rightist, hence , I offer facts about Palestinian voting patterns and agency. I do this in order to dispel the Disneyfied foreign-policy narrative of the West, and in order to make this clear:

Whatever we think of people, as a group; ethical human-beings can never-ever endorse their wholesale murder. I think these facts strengthen the rightist antiwar message, as they are made from a place of reality, not hippie naiveté.

I thank my editors at TNA for standing by The Truth.

https://thenewamerican.com/opinion/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity has always stood for the Truth.

That Truth is now visible from space.

I thank my podcast partner, David Vance, for sharing a moral commitment, and, well, having the proverbial male bits so few men have.

I am still hopeful there will be others.

Alas, little has changed since Iraq. This response to the razing of Gaza has elements of an Iraq redux, where you tell the unvarnished truth, https://www.ilanamercer.com/2004/11/liberation-has-a-body-count/, become persona non grata forever; and 15 years hence, you get to watch fools slowly feel their way to the truth as you and your ideological ilk had articulated, at the time it mattered, and against your own professional interests, https://www.ilanamercer.com/2015/05/iraq-liars-and-deniers-we-knew-then-what-we-know-now/ in dozens of essays, starting on September 19, 2002: https://www.ilanamercer.com/2002/09/why-so-many-americans-don-t-support-attacking-iraq .

Many are the good people who learn to trust you; the rest remain as dumb as fuck.

Excerpt from “BIBI OBLITERATES MEMORY OF OCT. 7 MARTYRS; CREATES NEW MARTYRS IN GAZA“:
https://thenewamerican.com/opinion/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

&

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/november/03/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

It’s simple: If you know in advance that your actions will cause the death of thousands of civilians; attached to your criminal actions (actus reus) is a guilty mind (mens rea), which means malice aforethought, also known as intent, in Western jurisprudence and judicial philosophy.

The razing of Gaza and the ongoing murder of thousands of civilians by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), with western imprimatur, is a war crime. Strafing civilian populations and pulverizing entire neighborhoods to ostensibly “soften” the few embedded targets within—this violates natural law, international law, and Just War Theory.  

It was true when Genghis Bush dropped daisy cutters and cluster bombs on Iraqi civilians, killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of them; it was true when allied forces firebombed Dresden and Hamburg, and it was true when Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on Japanese civilians.

Not that it helped his victims, but Truman icily expressed some “regret” for “the [beastly] necessity of wiping out whole populations”: “I know that Japan is a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare,” he told an ardent supporter, “but I can’t bring myself to believe that because they are beasts, we should ourselves act in that same manner.”

We know ineluctably that Gaza is “a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare.” The sympathies expressed by Gazans toward their neighbors, victims of the October 7 slaughter, were meager and grudging, coerced by media, for the most. …

…. These uncomfortable facts notwithstanding, murder with majority approval is still murder, whomever the perpetrator. Whether it is committed by actors within or without the State; by the designated “good guys” or the “bad guys”; murder of innocents is still murder. …

…THE RESTBIBI OBLITERATES MEMORY OF OCT. 7 MARTYRS; CREATES NEW MARTYRS IN GAZA” :
https://thenewamerican.com/opinion/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/november/03/bibi-obliterates-memory-of-oct-7-martyrs-creates-new-martyrs-in-gaza/

* Gaza, Before and After, Screen Pic Courtesy Al Jazeera